Affairs of State

Dominique Manotti is back on form with a tale of intrigue and corruption.

A call-girl whose black book lists her elite international clients is found murdered in an underground garage; a plane bound for Iran laden with illegal arms disappears from the skies over Turkey, and the presidents closest advisor Bornard, head of a controversial Elyse security unit, manipulates the system with consummate ease and illegality.

Until the day when rookie investigator Noria Ghozali determines to untangle the threads which bind these events together.

In doing so she penetrates the Elyses innermost system, confronts the workings of money and corruption within government, and in the process is forced to combat the institutional and overt racism which repeatedly stalls her. 'A splendid neo-realistic tale of everyday bleakness and transgression set in the seedy underworld of Paris.

You can smell the Gitanes and pastis fumes of the real France Maxim Jakubowski, Guardian; Manotti has Ellroys gift for complex plotting, but she has a grip on the economics, politics and social history which marks her as special . . . good generic crime fiction, with le flair in abundance TLS; Another excellent French crime writer to set alongside Fred Vargas Publishing News; Manotti effortlessly handles a fiendishly complicated plot.

Her characters are fully rounded and believable. And she is funny, accurately reflecting the gallows humour that people who frequently encounter horror often resort to as a defence Daily Telegraph