From the best-selling author of Three Strong Women comes a thrilling novel about a triple homicide that dredges up unsettling memories from a lawyer's childhoodThe heroine of Marie NDiaye's new novel is a quiet middle-aged lawyer, living a modest existence in Bordeaux. She has been so effectively consumed by her job she is known to all simply as Maitre Susane. But when Gilles Principaux shows up at her office asking her to defend his wife, who is accused of a horrific crime, Maitre Susane begins to crack.She seems to remember having been alone with him in her youth for a significant event, one her mind obsesses over but can't quite reconstruct. Who is this Gilles Principaux? And why would he come to her, a run-of-the-mill lawyer, for the most important trial of his life?While this mystery preoccupies Maitre Susane, at home she is greeted by Sharon, her faithful but peculiar housekeeper. Sharon arrived from Mauritius with her husband and children, and she lacks legal residency in France. And while Maitre Susane has generously offered Sharon her professional services, the young maid always finds ways to evade her, claiming the marriage certificate Maitre Susane requires is being held hostage. Is Sharon being honest with Maitre Susane, or is something more sinister going on?Told in a slow seethe recalling the short novels of Elena Ferrante and the psychological richness of Patricia Highsmith's work, Vengeance Is Mine is a dreamlike portrait of a woman afflicted by failing memories, tortured uncertainty, and an unreliability that frightens her.