A Climate of Fear - Fred Vargas

Occasionally, I can't wait for a new book by a loved author to be published.  In this case, I ordered A Climate of Fear from The Book Depository so I could have it before it was released in the United States.

Suicides aren't always suicides.  At least Commissaire Adamsberg doesn't think so.  An elderly woman is found dead in her bathtub, her wrists slit.  But she's fully clothed and there's an odd sign written next to the tub.  She had recently mailed a letter to a young man and met with him to tell him about a trip she'd been on to Iceland ten years ago.  The group got fogged in for weeks and barely survived.  Two were murdered by a mad man in the group.  One was the young man's mother.

The police's investigation leads them to a horse farm in a small village and to a group of people who are totally immersed in the French Revolution, dressing up and re-enacting the speeches of the assembly.  Robespierre is unsettlingly authentic.  

Eventually, Adamsberg and two of his detectives go to the island in Iceland where the murders took place.  And they find something unsettling.

Some of his department think he's barking up the wrong tree, wasting time on murders for which the statute of limitations has run out.  They think they should be concentrating on the murders of members of the French Revolution group.  They should know better than to doubt Adamsberg, an odd man who free-thinks and dreams and comes to the correct conclusion.

Apart from the regular unusual characters in the series, I fell in love with Marc, who appears in chapter IX.