Oh this is just fabulous news

Especially since I’m a new convert to this writer’s work:

Bestselling French mystery writer Fred Vargas’s HAVE MERCY ON US, compared in UK reviews to Henning Mankell, to Geoff Kloske at Simon & Schuster, by Jane Kirby at Harvill, in a pre-empt, in a two-book deal.

Vargas was recently profiled in the Guardian about her newest quest to work for unjustly incarcerated criminals, and she’s one of the most popular writers of policiers in her native country. All I have to say is, it’s about time her work crossed over to America?

HAVE MERCY ON US (ALL) was originally published in 2001 as PARS VITE ET REVIENS TARD. It’s a delightfully weird book with as enigmatic a protagonist as you can get in Inspector Adamsberg, who takes "stoic" to all sorts of new extremes. Oh yeah, and it’s all about the Black Plague, too — sort of…

Harvill published this book in 2003 with an earlier book, SEEK WHOM HE MAY DEVOUR, published late last year.