Commissaire Adamsberg investigates the death of three men linked by their childhood at an orphanage in Nimes, all killed by the venom of the recluse spider, in the new novel by the #1 bestselling French crime writer

"Spry, ironic, yet fully engaged with the horror of contemporary reality."
--Los Angeles Times

"A wildly imaginative series."--The New York Times

A murder in Paris brings Commissaire Adamsberg out of the Icelandic mists of his previous investigation and unexpectedly into the region of N mes, where three old men have died of spider bites. The recluse has a sneaky attack, but is that enough to explain the deaths of these men, all killed by the same venom?

At the National Museum of Natural History, Adamsberg meets a pensioner who tells him that two of the three octogenarians have known each other since childhood, when they lived in a local orphanage called The Mercy. There, they had belonged to a small group of violent young boys known as the "band of recluses." Adamsberg faces two obstacles: the third man killed by the same venom was not part of the "band of recluses," and the amount of spider venom necessary to kill doesn't add up.

Yet after the N mes deaths, more members of the old band succumb to recluse bites, leading the commissaire to uncover the tragedy hidden behind the walls of the orphanage.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 08/20/2019
ISBN: 9780143133667
Pages: 416
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.20w x 1.00d

Review Citations: Library Journal Prepub Alert 03/01/2019 pg. 92
Booklist 05/01/2019 pg. 38
Kirkus Reviews 06/15/2019 pg. 46
Publishers Weekly 07/01/2019