The best-selling detective novelist in France these days is a 49-year-old female medieval archeo-zoologist with a man’s name, who would rather not be considered a writer.

Her name is Fred Vargas — Fred because it’s a diminutive of her first name, and Vargas after the Ava Gardner character in The Barefoot Contessa. Her real name is Frederique Audouin-Rouzeau.

Until she turned to writing two decades ago, Vargas was trying to prove that rat fleas were responsible for the 14th century’s Black Death, which killed a third of all Europeans and millions more in Asia.

Heavy stuff. So heavy that, looking for something fun to do on vacations, she started writing what the French call policiers.

The writing seems to come easily. “I can write in Paris, Normandy, anywhere. But when I begin, it’s impossible to stop. I write the whole book in three weeks. I don’t sleep. It’s a bit terrifying.”

So far, she’s been terrified 16 times. Her bestselling works have been published in 35 countries. Four books have been translated into English, including her latest, Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand (Sous les vents de Neptune).

But please don’t call Vargas a writer. “I never say I’m a writer,” she explains. “It sounds too pretentious“. Police novels, she says, are a kind of diversion.

Full story | Fred Vargas on Wikipedia

Related: True crime (Guardian, 2004)

Fred Vargas is a highly successful French crime writer, but since she declared her support for an Italian author faced with extradition, her calls are monitored and she is followed by the intelligence services. [...]