The Ghost Riders of Ordebec

After decades in which crime fiction in French was dominated by the Belgian author Georges Simenon, it has an indisputable new star in Fred Vargas

Joan Smith, Sunday Times

Vargas depicts brilliantly a rural community riven with superstition, where class distinctions have existed for centuries

The Times

An early contender for outstanding crime novel of the year

Sunday Times

A glorious mix of myth, quirky observation and gallic humour

Sunday Telegraph

Her novels about the kindly, quixotic Commissaire Adamsberg are unique, presenting us with a France that resembles Simenon’s in its concreteness but with a fantastical, even surreal, twist: werewolves, vampires and, in her latest novel, an army of ghosts on horseback… Her work is like a baked Camembert among the smorgasbord of chilly Scandinavian realism that dominates the foreign crime fiction market here, delicious comfort food for the sophisticated palate

Jake Kerridge, Daily Telegraph

There are, it seems, two types of people: those who have discovered the quirky bliss of Fred Vargas's novels and those who don't know a good thing when they see it on the shelf

Independent on Sunday

A celebration of love and camaraderie among the unlikeliest allies

Metro