Dominique Manotti was born in Paris in 1942 and has lived there all her life. She was a political and trade-union activist for many years and taught contemporary history and economics at the high-school and undergraduate levels. Her first novel, Sombre Sentier (1995; published 2002 as Rough Trade, translated into English by Margaret Crosland and Elfreda Powell), focuses on an illegal garment workers’ strike in the Sentier district of Paris in 1980 in which she was involved. Her Lorraine Connection, in Amanda Hopkinson and Ros Schwartz's translation, won the 2009 International Dagger award for crime writing. Her other novels include A nos chevaux ! (1997; published 2006 as Dead Horsemeat, translated by Amanda Hopkinson and Ros Schwartz); Kop (1998); Le corps noir (2004) ; Bien connu des services de police (2010; published 2009 as Affairs of State, trans. Amanda Hopkinson and Ros Schwartz); L’Honorable Société (2011); L’Evasion (2013) ; and .Le Rêve de Madoff  (2013).