Two estranged twin sisters as they hunt down their elusive mother in this razor-sharp crime novel from « master of the dark arts » J. Robert Lennon (Kelly Link).

HARD GIRLS
by J. Robert Lennon
Mulholland Books, February 2024
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

Jane Pool likes her safe, suburban existence just fine. She has a house, a family, (an infuriating mother-in-law,) and a quiet-if-unfulfilling administrative job at the local college. Everything is wonderfully, numbingly normal. Yet Jane remains haunted by her past: her mercurial, absent mother, her parents’ secrets, and the act of violence that transformed her life. When her estranged twin, Lila, makes contact, claiming to know where their mother is and why she left all those years ago, Jane agrees to join her, desperate for answers and the chance to reconnect with the only person who really knew her true self. Yet as the hunt becomes treacherous, and pulls the two women to the earth’s distant corners, they find themselves up against their mother’s subterfuge and the darkness that always stalked their family. Now Jane stands to lose the life she’s made for the one that has been impossible to escape.

Set in both the Pool family’s past and their present, and melding elements of a chase novel, an espionage thriller, and domestic suspense, HARD GIRLS is an utterly distinctive pastiche—propulsive, mysterious, cracked, intelligent, and unexpected at every turn.

J. Robert Lennon is the author of ten novels, including Familiar, Broken River, and Subdivision, and the story collections Pieces for the Left Hand, See You in Paradise, and Let Me Think. He lives in Ithaca, New York.