All roads lead to Rome ...

Here we are in Rome in pursuit of drawings by Michelangelo mysteriously disappeared from the Vatican, the large local library.
Without the support that will come later Commissioner Adamsberg, Fred Vargas just a little for a few chapters to develop his characters.
It is the effect of a social evening where, looking a bit borrowed, we greet other unknown guests: a trio of son to father lying idle in art studies and especially chic and decadent feasts Rome (they took the names of Roman emperors Nero, Tiberius and Claude). The mother of one of them, whimsical femme fatale. A charming and talkative Italian inspector. A Papist Bishop that seems to easily arrange the divine consciousness. A Missi Dominici in heinous nature sent by a Parisian Department cover-up.
But once we got to know all the guests, the show just started.
Fred Vargas shows a deep human tenderness for his characters and this is necessarily communicative.
This first novel almost allows us to discover the construction Vargas almost transparently: the author is interested above all to his characters. Some crazy figures, offset from Tronches, unusual personalities. Once they established and known to the reader, the machine starts up and we lay the poetic and surreal dialogue, do you want in here.
Throughout the chapters she sows here and there, the tone playful: an innocent phrase here, an insignificant character there, an insignificant share further, ...
And then, at the turn of a page, comes the mischievous harvest time: it makes plop, plop, and one rejoices to see how it turns and assembles all the pieces to draw a surprising puzzle.
To this we must add that Fred Vargas does not take itself seriously and does not take our heads. His books are read in one sitting as kind and sympathetic stories where the bad guys are never very bad and everything is well that ends well.
For the sake of language and reading.