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In her third novel, Mandel creates an atmospheric tale of love, fear and unrealised potential.

Gavin Sasaki is a man of another age. He loves jazz, fedoras and a time before technology, but the biggest challenge Gavin faces is the news he may have a ten year old daughter with Anna, the girlfriend who left him in high school and whom he hasn’t seen since. The news shocks him into a downward spiral that sees him fired from his job as a journalist and living on his sister’s charity in the home town he fled ten years earlier. As Gavin seeks Anna and the truth, he reconnects with friends from his old school band – the Lola Quartet – and soon realises Anna and his former friends have deep secrets that could put them all in danger.

The story opens with Anna – seventeen, on the run with a baby, and one hundred and twenty thousand dollars strapped to the underside of the stroller. Yet this is Gavin’s story, and we learn of Anna through his rose-coloured memories. The Lola Quartet has been called Literary Noir. It is the story of a crime, dark secrets and a woman on the run, yet it is principally a tale of broken dreams, redemption and the consequences of choices made. The pace is gentle. The background of jazz clubs and musicians is a wonderful counterpoint for the oppressiveness of the Florida humidity and the dreams destroyed by the sub-prime collapse – all facets of Gavin’s new life. As we learn more of the past and what happened to Anna, it emerges that the slightly enigmatic girl Gavin remembers is a woman of determination and contrasts who will do just about anything to protect her child.

The Lola Quartet is literary fiction at its best. Mandel’s deft touch draws you into a contemporary world that is both very real and somewhat elusive and which stays with you long after it is read.