Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

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Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand
1st English edition cover
Author	Fred Vargas
Original title	Sous les vents de Neptune
Translator	Sian Reynolds
Country	France
Language	French
Series	Commissaire Adamsberg
Genre(s)	Crime / Mystery
Publisher	Viviane Hamy (French) Harvill secker (English)
Publication date	2004
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
ISBN	ISBN 2-87858-190-3 (French) ISBN 1-84343-273-0 (English)
Followed by	This Night's Foul Work

Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand is a crime-novel by French author Fred Vargas, originally published in France in 2004. The novel is part of her internationally popular Commissaire Adamsberg series. As with many of Vargas' novels in English translation, the English title bears no relationship to the original which is called Under Neptune's Winds. The English title adroitly chooses a quote from Shakespeare's Macbeth (Act II, Scene ii, 57-8): "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?" In 2007 the book was shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Duncan Lawrie International Dagger, the second year in a row Vargas was shortlisted for the award (The Three Evangelists having won the previous year), and the first time an author has been shortlisted for a main CWA Award for three successive novels. In the year 2007 this novel won the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger Award.