Quai des Polars 2020: Books shortlisted for the readers prize, Number 2
Sites to visit linked to this proud event unfortunately now cancelled.
Emma, Marina-Sofia and the official event site Quai des Polars In order to support this event, hopefully I’ll manage to write articles on all six of the short listed thrillers and propose my winner before the official announce on the 4th of April.
In order to reach the largest readership possible for this attempt, I have created a website to publish my six articles and to propose my winner ****in French*** please go to my French website and don’t hesitate to make it viral
Before the NGO, she had managed a subsidiary of a company manufacturing garden tools, then an ex-student from her old business school offered to inject her hard earned experience in corporate management into an international organisation fighting against poverty. 
There was no reason that the poor shouldn’t be profitable too. She seamlessly swapped lawn mowers and garden hoses for starving children and war refugees, managing “Urgences majeures” the same way.***
Pascale Dietrich’s thriller follows in the footsteps of Hannelore Cayre’s ‘The Daronne’, putting women at the centre of a criminal organisation, here the local mafia, still heavily linked to their Italian roots, in Grenoble. I should add that the writing is not as crisp as in ‘La Daronne’. The book begins as Leone Acampora, the head of a local Mafia family does something unusual and dies of natural causes, but he then sends a sealed letter to his wife, Michèle via his friend and her “secret” lover, Bernard, to tell her that he is so impatient to be with her again in the after life that he has put a contract out on her to hasten the moment when they can be together again. This sends his wife and his two daughters into a spin. Alessia, who intends to continue the family business, putting drugs through her pharmacy and Dina the younger daughter who has swapped organised crime for an NGO making money out of the “poor” business as illustrated in the opening quote.
The women set out to find out the name of the assassin, Michèle visits the Remo Lanfredi, the ageing head of the local mafia in the retirement home he has built for himself and other ageing mafia characters, but he can’t help, later causing the otherwise calm Dina’s imagination to go into overdrive:
She imagined a deadly attack on Remo’s retirement home, the pensioners trying to run away with their walking frames or desperately reving up the electric motors of their wheel chairs.***
Alessia chooses to visit Madeleine, one of her mother’s friends and the widow of an ex-Mafia leader, bitter at Remo Lanfredi and who sends her on the trail of Remo’s son Cosimo, rumoured to be coming backto Grenoble to take over from his father. Madeleine then tells Alessia of the power of the Mafia women:
I’m going to tell you something. The only ones that could one day bring down the Mafia are us, the women. If we decided to speak, all of the men would instantly wind up in prison.***
We get an image of Alessia’s character, and of Pascale Dietrich’s style later in the story as she tries to keep her rage under control:
Once behind the wheel of the car she turned on her meditation CD which urged her to imagine a place where she would feel at peace. She hit the accelerator and imagined herself on a beach in Brittany. When she reached the motorway she was dreaming of opening fire on the seagulls with a machine gun.***
A pleasant read, based on a well constructed story based around the husband reaching back from the death and the women’s response. Not the winner for me.
First Published in French as “Les Mafieuses” in 2019 by Liana Levi.
*** My translation
The quotes as read in French before translation
Avant l’ONG, elle avait dirigé une filiale d’outils de jardinage, puis un ancien élève de son école de commerce lui avait proposé d’insuffler son précieux savoir-faire en gestion d’entreprise dans une organisation internationale qui visait à lutter contre la pauvreté. Il n’y avait aucune raison pour que les pauvres ne soient pas rentables, eux aussi. Elle était donc passée sans transition des tondeuses à gazon et des tuyaux d’arrosage aux enfants faméliques et aux réfugiés de guerre, et elle dirigeait Urgences majeures de la même façon.
Elle imagina un raid meurtrier dans la maison de retraite de Remo, les vieux tentant de prendre la fuite en poussant leurs déambulateurs ou en faisant vrombir désespérément les moteurs de leurs fauteuils roulants électriques.
Je vais te dire une chose. Les seules qui pourront un jour faire tomber la mafia, c’est nous, les femmes. Si on se décidait à parler, tous les hommes seraient en prison en moins de deux.
Une fois au volant de sa voiture, elle alluma le lecteur CD et le disque de méditation l’exhorta à visualiser un endroit où elle se sentirait en paix. Elle mit la gomme en s’imaginant sur une plage bretonne. Quand elle atteignit l’autoroute, elle rêvait qu’elle tirait sur les mouettes à la mitraillette.
South of Paris books 