A #1 bestselling author in France, Fred Vargas repeatedly captivates her many admirers across the globe with suspenseful mysteries featuring Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, a Gallic cousin to Ruth Rendell’s Chief Inspector Wexford” (The Washington Post). In the same way that Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti and Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano have won countless fans on this side of the Atlantic due to Penguin’s robust commitment to the best international mystery writing, Vargas’s Commissaire Adamsberg is poised to conquer America in a series of novels that are truly original . . . like nothing else in contemporary fiction” (The Sunday Times, London), beginning with Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand.