The Awkward Squad is the first book in the Awkward Squad/Anne Capestan series by French author, Sophie Hénaff. It is translated from French by Sam Gordon. After a six-month suspension for being a little too trigger-happy, Commissaire Anne Capestan faces the top brass of the Ile-de-France Police force hoping not to have lost her job. She hasn’t. Instead, she is to head a new squad and will report directly to her former mentor, now Chief at 36, quai des Orfèvres, Buron.

Relieving all the other squads of some of the force’s least conventional members, the undesirable ones: the drunkards, the thugs, the depressives, the layabouts and everyone in between – the people hamstringing the force but who can’t be fired – are all to be absorbed into one squad and forgotten about in some corner.

Capestan’s squad is meant to comprise forty of these, but she’ll be surprised if twenty actually show up; turns out only half that do. Their directive is to deal with all the unsolved open cases and not satisfactorily resolved closed cases that are dragging down the statistics of other squads.

By definition, those relegated to this squad of misfits will be quirky. First to turn up are: Commandant Louis-Baptiste Lebreton, a nit-picker from internal affairs who brought a discrimination complaint against his boss; Lt José Torrez aka Malchance, whose jinx has him losing partners in the worst possible way; Capitaine Eva Rosière, a flamboyant crime novelist writing a TV series; and Lt Évrard, a compulsive gambler.

Joining them a bit later are: the appropriately named Capitaine Merlot, an alcoholic deskbound grandpa; Capitaine Orsini, whose campaign against corruption includes alerting journalists to his finds; Brigadier Lewitz, a petrolhead with a history of demolishing cars; and Lt Dax, ex-Cyber-Crime, now with boxer’s brain.

They find themselves tucked away on the attic floor of an apartment building at number 3, rue des Innocents, sparsely outfitted with worn out furnishings and equipment, and allocated three knackered vehicles. They don’t hesitate to improve their lot, bringing or buying comforts to make their job more bearable.

What is perhaps surprising is that these unwanted police officers, when freed from irritating regulations and demanding superiors, when allowed to play to their strengths, are unexpectedly capable, and ready, even eager, to team up to get their teeth into some unsolved cases. “I’ve been a cast-off for years. Beforehand it was just me, but now there’s a whole team of us. As far as I’m concerned, that’s progress.”

Not all of them see themselves as on the shelf, cretinous officers in the naughty corner, however. One tells her “I consider my role to be more of a supporting one, commissaire.”

Having resorted her secret weapon (Orsini and his journalist pals) to get a result in their parc Morceau drug dealer case, Capestan begins to wonder if her mentor has set the whole thing up to suit his own purposes. He is known for manipulation: does he have an agenda? It won’t deter her from investigating two further cases, whether or not they get any cooperation from 36.

The concept of shoving all the misfits together somewhere out of the way so they can’t do any more damage will strike a chord with readers of Mick Herron’s Slough House series, although the Awkward Squad’s leader is quite the polar opposite of Jackson Lamb. But like his staff, Anne’s squad are glad to see some action.

Hénaff’s plot is clever enough to keep the reader guessing and the pages turning. Her characters are fun and more than one-dimensional, taking very little time to endear themselves to the reader. Luckily there are two further books in the series, although English-speakers will be hoping that 3 is translated soon. Very entertaining!