根据弗雷德·瓦加斯(FRED VARGAS)的畅销侦探小说改编,这本书曾获多项侦探小说奖。除了一扇门以外,巴黎的一些楼房公寓的门上被人画上了一些神秘难解的符号(反写的阿拉伯数字4,和C、L、T这三个字母)。警察探长让-巴蒂斯特·阿当斯贝格凭直觉知道这不是普通的涂鸦行为。果然,一连串的命案发生了,所有门上没有被画上反写的4符号的房客都死了,死者都是全身赤裸,被浇上黑漆,医生难以解释其死因。探长阿当斯贝格怀疑这与街头宣读公告人乔斯·勒盖恩在巴黎雷阿尔(LES HALLES)广场上有时用拉丁文宣读的神秘信件有关,他开始调查,逐步解开了黑死病杀人事件背后隐藏的真相In Paris, many citizens go to the precinct after the doors of their apartments have been sprayed with a 4 and the letters "clt". When a dweller is found mysteriously dead in his apartment, Detective Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg and his partner Danglard investigate the case and discover that plague may have killed the victim. Meanwhile, in the center of Paris, the former actor Joss Le Guern survives reading advertisements in a square for the public; when he receives weird messages about an outbreak of plague that is coming to Paris, the former professor Hervé Decambrais requests the warnings and goes to the library to research the meaning of the text, where he meets Adamsberg. Together they find that a maniac is killing people using flees contaminated by rats and spreading the disease in the city; without any clue, the police force do not have how to avoid the panic in Paris.