Katrien Deschryver is someone who has always been what others saw in her, and has never been herself.  And so her way of living became making herself fit the expectations of anyone who expected something.  In the opening scene of the book for the first time she does something unexpected: kill her husband.  By accident.
This is the start of an investigation in which all the dirt of her family risks to come up, and that is quite something, given the importance of her relatives.  They have connections in politics and commerce, all on the highest levels.  And against this whole corruption machine a lone magistrate has taken it upon him to unravel the web of intrigues.

On first sight this is a persiflage of the Belgium of the nineties, but it is more than just that.  Sure, some ministers and industrialists are recognizable, but it goes beyond that.  The egocentric society is carefully dissected, the faltering government laid bare, and all of that would be dead boring if it wasn't for the lovely sauce of satire that covers everything.

No, this book doesn't describe Belgium as it is nor as it was.  But it does show certain aspects we all got so used to, and it was good to read this sarcastic view, if only to connect individual things from the news into a bigger, be it fictive, context.