Ten top novels in mother-daughter noir

Lisa Levy is a columnist and contributing editor at LitHub and CrimeReads. At the latter she tagged ten books in which "mothers and daughters are trying to reconnect, protect each other, and reckon with their formative bond," including:

Hush Hush, by Laura Lippman

Melisandre Harris Dawes is infamous for an unspeakable crime: infanticide. In this installment of Lippman’s popular Tess Monaghan series, the private eye is charged with helping, or maybe protecting, Dawes while she films a documentary about the crime and tries to reconnect with the teenaged daughters she abandoned after her baby died. Meanwhile, Tess’s daughter has hit the terrible twos, and she’s trying to juggle motherhood and Dawes’s increasingly disturbing and complex case. Lippman’s book takes an unflinching look at motherhood in all its guises, from intense love to murderous rage.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Hush Hush.

--Marshal Zeringue