My first Vargas, and I must say that I devoured in a few hours, which is unusual because I usually like to enjoy books and reading very slowly. The plot is very well built, and the story is exciting, although after a while we can guess who the culprit; in fact, if you guessed, this does not prevent the end to be interesting, to know his motivations, the way he has conducted ... for example. I did not put 5 stars, however, because there is still something that I like least, it is the frequent references to previous stories, especially about the personal life of Adamsberg. If we disregard this (and indeed we can, because what we said Adamsberg privacy is sufficient to briefly understand what happened), it is not necessary to Having read the previous novels to understand the story, the plot is completely independent of the other books.