Police captain Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg doesn’t like springtime. He’s wary of renewed vigor, desires for escape, a surge of impulses, all these signals that indicate the return of fine weather… He has every reason to be wary. His girlfriend, Camille, has packed her bags and left, and her absence has clipped his wings, right at the moment when he needed them most, for something has just occurred in Paris: a riddle bearing a curse, that could well turn into calamity if it’s not resolved double quick. Strange signs spread out across the doors of Paris buildings, and mysterious, troubling words ringing out in public places. Then what Adamsberg most dreaded occurs: the first death, the person’s face frozen in a look of terror, signs of the Plague. It was this that the riddle announced, the return of this terrible plague, but with a surprising variation: it seems that someone controls the disease and takes it wherever he wants...