Copout

Description

In an unexplained meeting between Police Inspector Romero and Nadine Speck, drug addict and dealer, both are shot dead in the streets of Levallois by a group of killers on motorbikes. It seems that their target was the young lady. Her brother Eric is the manager of the football stadium of Lisle-sur-Seine, whose club, after a lightening rise, is about to become champion in France. The president of the club, Jean-Pierre Reynaud, knows that it's not a safe bet. He is about to transfer one of his star players for an astronomical amount of money. But where does the money come from? Who financed the murders? And, what was Romero doing with that troubled girl, outside an official enquiry? Police chief Daquin believes his inspector to be innocent, and while tracing the murderers' lead, he opens the door behind which corruption - and several dead bodies - are hidden.

Dominique Manotti was born in Paris in 1942 and currently teaches nineteenth-century Economic History. Rough Trade, her first novel, was awarded best thriller of the year by the French Crime Writers' Association and Book of the Year in the Independent by Amanda Hopkinson and Joan Smith; while Dead Horsemeat was shortlisted for the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger Award 2006.

'Chief among them is Dominique Manotti, whose gritty Parisian policiers are set against real events from the past 20 years...An experimental, impressionistic, scattergun present-tense style that conveys great immediacy' - Times