Fred Vargas works as an archaeologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France, where she specialises in animal bones. She has written 12 novels about her detective hero, the slow-thinking, intuitive Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg. She is also the moving force behind a group of French artists, philosophers and writers who believe that the French government has shamefully reneged on its promise to give Cesare Battisti and his fellow political refugees immunity from extradition in return for them giving up political activism.
Can you approach a detective story in the same way as archaeology?
For years I was asked if the two…
