Patience Portefeux, the widowed 53-year-old narrator of French author Cayre's exuberant English-language debut, lives hand-to-mouth, barely covering her two daughters' university fees and her aged mother's care working as a translator for the Paris drug squad. By chance, Patience comes into contact with the mother of a drug trafficker and, with information from police wiretaps of the trafficker's movements, is able to secure a large quantity of hash. Under the alias the Godmother, she deals herself into financial security, going so far as to launder the money in Switzerland with the purchase of pink diamonds she hides in lipstick tubes. Maybe crime doesn't pay, but the guile and guts--and humor--with which Patience approaches this extreme solution to her desperate situation, right under the noses of law enforcement, is admirable, as are her survival instincts. Readers will be anxious about the fate of the forthright, sympathetic Patience up to the final page. It's no surprise that this novel won the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, France's most prestigious award for crime fiction. (Sept.)