© Ullstein, 1999
Detective Grace de Rossa is thirty-four years old and her life is a mess. Her husband has left her for her best friend. Her mother-in-law-from-hell haunts her with bad advice. Her middle-class family don't approve of her career and Grace begins to think that she doesn't much like it either. Two police raids on the criminal McDowell brothers go badly wrong and Grace is suspected of being on the take from them. A runaway girl is found murdered. Grace insists that this is a case of child abuse but her superiors disagree. As Grace tries to find the child's killer and clear her own name, she is helped by Phoebe Lamplighter, a high-class hooker, and Phoebe's minder, a very large Vietnam veteran called Mungo. Are Phoebe and Mungo suitable guardians for Phoebe's precocious computer expert son, Ronan? Grace doesn't think so but events in this rapid, funny, disturbing thriller force her to change her mind about her unconventional allies - and about her life.
Poolbeg Press 1995
Translated into: German
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