ROGUE FEMALE
by Lex Lander

MAKE BARDOT MAD ENOUGH AND SHE FORGETS SHE USED TO BE A COP

The Cote d’Azur. Jewel of France. A hundred miles of beach-bordered, palm-fringed coastline that includes those other jewels, Monte Carlo, Cannes, and St Tropez, not forgetting Cap Ferrat with its billionaire homes overlooking the blue Mediterranean. And of course Nice.

Nice represents the dark side of this paradise: protection rackets, prostitution, drugs, illegal immigration, and lately, kidnapping for ransom. A series of high-profile abductions has the police floundering. The latest victim is a U.S. billionaire’s vacationing son, whose eighteen-year old girlfriend is scooped up with him. But the girlfriend is in Nice to visit her half-sister, who happens to be Brigitte Janneau – a.k.a. ‘Bardot’. Brigitte is a Franco-American ex-undercover officer with the Nice National Police, dismissed for the unlawful killing of a wanted hoodlum.

A ransom of ten million euros is demanded for the son’s safe return. Brigitte, bent on rescuing her sister, sets out to track down the kidnappers, riding roughshod over police sensibilities in the process. Does she care? Not a bit.

The kidnappers’ leader is female and Russian and ruthless. A member of the gang commits an error that exposes her identity to the kidnapped couple. She decides that they must be eliminated after the ransom is collected. Pursuing her enquiries with a single-mindedness that blinds her to the risks, Brigitte begins to close in on the gang. Inevitably they realise they’ll have to eliminate her too …