For Maritsa, with love

Maritsa is a gypsy, an accomplished beggar, living by her wits, working the Paris Metro. She is an orphan, but relies on the support of her extended family until the day she decides to strike out on her own. She shares a platform sleeping place with homeless Rose, an elderly retired teacher who alternately scolds and protects her. The hostility and suspicion aroused by her gypsy origins pale into insignificance next to the sinister organiser of a paedophile ring who entraps her with the promise of a fictitious film test. It is her friendship with Paul, a busker-cum-undercover policeman which both endangers and saves her: he judges her strong enough to cope with her captor and rescues her from the lair she has unwittingly led him to. The book is crammed with fascinatingly detailed descriptions of characters and settings; the alternative world of the Paris Metro is made startlingly clear. Racial prejudice, intolerance and corruption are insistently but subtly developed themes, providing a narrative which entertains and instructs but never patronises.