Have Mercy on Us All

Joss Le Guern, a washed-up sailor, has possibly the greatest job in the world: Three times a day he stands in a Paris square, shouting the news to eager listeners. He's a modern-day crier, and rather than bellowing the day's political news, he yells whatever people pay him to say—his customers drop anonymous notes in a chest with payment for his troubles.

Trouble arises when a series of mysterious messages begins piling up in the box, phrased in an incomprehensible Old English and warning that another outbreak of the plague is just around the corner. At the same time, someone begins painting large numeral fours on apartment doors around town—marks that historically were thought to ward off the black death. Enter Chief Inspector Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, a brilliant detective who's able to see a connection between the two.

Vargas is the hottest property in French crime fiction these days. Since her award-winning first novel, Debout les Morts, was published in 1986, her sales have climbed with each release. She's also a character of international intrigue herself: As the head of the support committee for Italian crime writer and accused terrorist Cesare Battisti, the French government has taken a special interest in her.

Readers have taken to Vargasbecause, if Mercy is any indication, her characters are fascinating and fully realized, devoid of the excess quirks and stale archetypes of somuch crime fiction. Often, thriller writers get dragged into a boring morass of detail, feeling the need to include every scrap of their research to prove how "real" their novel is. A well-regarded historian and archeologist, Vargas—who is employed at the French National Scientific Research Center—knows Paris and its history so well, she invisibly infuses the book with detail throughout. Her first novel to be published in the States, Mercy is a thriller that's only a guilty pleasure insofar as it's so addictive, one might feel bad about ignoring obligations that get in the way of reading time.—Jonathan Messinger