Since the publication of Maupassant's Bel Ami, nothing has really changed: in Paris everyone still loves, betrays and takes revenge. A young minister, charming and depraved, is involved in a high-profile trial. And also an Englishman, the spitting image of Falstaff with the manners of a wealthy landowner, a lover of cigars and luxurious life at public expense, claiming to be acting in the interests of France. Their case is handled by an unforgiving and dispassionate investigator who is out for their blood. What a panorama of morals! What is this comedy where secret information is exchanged and bank accounts are manipulated in Lugano? Or an impartial narrative about the vile underbelly of a regime mired in corruption?

Gilles Martin-Choffier (b. 1954, Neuilly-sur-Seine) is a French writer and journalist, editor-in-chief of Paris Match magazine, a man familiar first-hand with the customs of the political and business elite.