If Euro Crime really is the new black, then its popularity is due in no small measure to a sense of recognisably distinct voices being applied to recognisably distinct places. A few pages of a good Euro crime novel and it should be clear where we are and the sort of ride we are in for. This is certainly true of Fred Vargas’ latest novel, This Night’s Foul Work, which is idiosyncratic, elliptical, playful, implausible and affected. Its characters, more a collection of quirks than real people, are self-obsessed, prone to unselfconcious discussions of academic philosophy or breaking into 17th C poetic forms at the drop of a hat. Is this heady brew particularly French? Maybe, maybe not – but it’s a thousand miles away from a Scandinavian police procedural.

In the Paris flea market, two small-time drug dealers have had their throats cut. It is clearly a case for the Drug Squad, yet Zen homicide detective Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, notices some dirt under the victims’ fingernails and this is enough for him to become involved. It soon emerges the murders may be the work of a wraith-like, elderly female serial killer(!) who Adamsberg caught but who has now made a daring escape from prison(!!). Despised by the rest of the force but revered by his own motley crew, Adamsberg pursues the shadowy killer across Paris and the Normandy countryside. And then the story flies truly out there, taking in grave-robbery, stag mutilation, ghosts, narcolepsy, 17th century recipes and a criminally intense intra-village rivalry. Oh yes, did I mention the homing cat?

Vargas in general and This Night’s Foul Work in particular, simply should not work. Yet work they gloriously do. The book is recognisable as a police procedural yet Vargas’ unique style is based upon a willful disregard for reality, which is never bound by narrow definitions of rationality in either behaviour or plotting. At times this approach verges on being either irritating or even plain silly, but for most of This Night’s Foul Work, it is hugely liberating. Freed from the strictures of logic Vargas’ storylines are not only entertainingly unbelievable but turn on deliberately ridiculous devices (watch out for that cat). The enigmatic and gnostic Commissaire Adamsberg has more Zen than procedure, reminiscent of a Gallic Sherlock Holmes. His crew are no less baroque and no less engaging – best of all perhaps is the loyal giant, Violette Retancourt. Although she is given a run for her money by the mysterious new recruit, Veyranc, with his penchant for talking in 17th C verse and a secret motive for being on Adamsberg’s team. Vargas has created a parallel universe, one at 90 degree angle to our own and This Night’s Foul Work is detective fiction as written by a magic realist.

At one point a senior detective complains: “The book, the cat, the third virgin, the bits of bone, the whole bloody lot. It’s a complete load of bollocks.” How much you agree will depend on your tolerance for whimsical eccentricity, but Vargas is gloriously imaginative and This Night’s Foul Work makes a wonderfully entertaining and refreshing change from much of the po-faced seriousness of other police thrillers.

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