Missing Mom

Missing Mom is a 2005 novel by American writer Joyce Carol Oates about the murder of a middle-aged widow.

Plot
Nikki Eaton, a 31-year-old journalist in a small town in New York state, deals with the murder of her widowed mother, Gwen, by a meth addict, while having an affair with a married man and clashing with her more conventional older sister.

Reception
Stacey D'Erasmo in The New York Times noted the themes of feminism and class politics in the novel and praised it as "more disturbing" than Oates's typical crime fiction. Kirkus Reviews was negative, calling the novel "irrationally bloated" and based on a "banal premise".