The Godmother: A Crime Novel

Meet Patience Portefeux, an underpaid fifty-three-year-old Franco-Arab interpreter for the Ministry of Justice who specializes in phone tapping. Widowed after the sudden death of her husband, Patience is now wedged between university fees for her daughters and nursing home costs for her mother. When she happens upon an especially revealing set of police wiretaps ahead of all other authorities, Patience makes a life-altering decision that sets her on an entirely new, illicit career path and sees her become The Godmother. With its gallery of traffickers, dealers, police officers and politicians, Hannelore Cayre's bestselling novel The Godmother casts a sharp and amusing gaze on everyday survival in contemporary France. Hannelore Cayre is an award-winning French novelist, screenwriter, director and practicing criminal lawyer. Her works include Legal Aid, Toiles de maître and Comme au cinéma. After working as a lawyer in Sydney and London, translator Stephanie Smee made her literary debut with an English translation of the Countess of Ségur's Fleurville Trilogy.