BOOK CLUB

THE GODMOTHER

Hannelore Cayre, Black Inc, $28

s you can see from the photograph, this is a short novel. It won the European Crime Fiction Prize and delivers a narrator you will never forget. Patience Portefeux is a migrant living in Paris. Her Austrian mother, heartless monster that she was, purchased a Moroccan slave (yes, in Paris, in the 1970s) to look after the child, so Patience speaks Arabic fluently. Her parents smuggled drugs, weapons and people in and out of France and became rich; however, they had to hide their wealth to avoid suspicion. When Patience’s father died, the business and the proceeds vanished. Patience now has two daughters to support and an institutionalised mother. She earns a living translating tapped calls for the Paris police, but she needs more cash. One day