Gavin Sasaki is a promising young journalist in New York City, until he’s fired in disgrace following a series of unforgivable lapses in his work. It’s early 2009, and the world has gone dark very quickly; the economic collapse has turned an era that magazine headlines once heralded as the second gilded age into something that more closely resembles the Great Depression. The last thing Gavin wants is to return to his hometown of Sebastian, Florida, but he’s drifting toward bankruptcy and is in no position to refuse when he’s offered a job by his sister, Eilo, a real estate broker who deals in foreclosed homes.Eilo recently paid a visit to a home that had a ten-year-old child in it, a girl who bears a strong resemblence to Gavin and who has the same last name as Gavin’s high school girlfriend Anna, whom Gavin last saw a decade ago. Gavin -- a former jazz musician, a reluctant broker of foreclosed homes, obsessed with film noir and private detectives -- begins his own private investigation in an effort to track down Anna and their apparent daughter. The Lola Quartet, a work of literary noir, is concerned with jazz, Django Reinhardt, economic collapse, friendship and love, Florida’s exotic wildlife problem, fedoras, and the unreliability of memory.

Emily St. John Mandel was born on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. She studied dance at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre and lived briefly in Montreal before relocating to New York. Her new novel, THE LOLA QUARTET, is forthcoming from McArthur & Company in May 2012. Her two previous novels are Last Night In Montreal and The Singer's Gun. Her short fiction will appear in the anthology Venice Noir, forthcoming from Akashic Books in February 2012. She lives in Brooklyn.

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