This poison will remain, by Fred Vargas

My husband grabbed this at random off the shelf as the library was shutting down. It turned out to be the most recent, and seventh, in a series by French author Vargas featuring Commissaire Adamsberg. I suspect both of us will seek out her earlier books. Like other favorite series featuring unique, gifted, and complicated detectives (think Elizabeth George and Louise Penny), the surrounding cast of characters in the department are all also highly individual and quirky. As is the crime that is being investigated in this outing. Elderly men, who share a connection long ago to an orphanage, are succumbing to brown recluse bites, however, unlike its familiar Missouri-wide cousin, the French version is much less dangerous and very seldom lethal. What is going on, and what, if any connection do these events have to do with a modern-day human recluse, a woman shut away in a cell dependent upon the charity of neighbors for her cloistered life? Such recluses were common in the Middle Ages, but are virtually unheard of now. Commissaire Adamsberg has, however, encountered one as a young, impressionable child, a memory he has suppressed and which will surface during his investigations. Several complex plots, which draw upon the author’s training in history and archeology, are skillfully interwoven. Fun to find another series to enjoy. 408 pp.