Mickey will turn twenty-one soon, and she is expected to inherit a vast fortune from Raffermi, a rich old Italian businesswoman who once married Mi's widowed father.
It turns out that Jeanne and Mickey had a love-hate relationship in the past, and Mi's behavior in the months leading to the accident was increasingly erratic, and she refused to visit the dying Raffermi.
The novel subverts the conventions of the genre as the amnesiac heroine assumes all the basic roles of a mystery story: "I was the detective, the murderer, the victim and the witness, all at once.
"[2] Susan M. Myers writes that "Japrisot has constructed his story in such a way that the text reveals, but then conceals the identity of the heroine, for each time a possible interpretation arises, doubt floods in from another source.
[11] Trap for Cinderella was the winner of the 1963 Grand Prix de Littérature policière in France, and was described as "a Simenon proofread by Robbe-Grillet" and "Marienbad of the crime novels.
"[12] Anthony Boucher called it "a beautifully intricate essay in novel-writing and mystery-making," in which "the uncertainties and ambivalence are sustained with great skill", and added that the novel "certainly maintains Japrisot's reputation as a highly original and professional writer of murder-suspense.
"[13] Martin Hurcombe and Simon Kemp write that "Japrisot's innovation... lies in the extreme juxtaposition of the competing versions of the event, and the ambiguity that results both from this and the use of an amnesiac detective, a device that has become more current since the publication of Piège.