Marlene Higson is Lula Landry‘s biological mother who gave her daughter up for adoption. She is characterized as being quite rough and low class.

Cormoran Strike meets her in the beer garden of the Ordnance Arms where he buys her a pint of Carling and interviews her about her relationship with Lula. She smokes Rothmans cigarettes.

Marlene reveals to Strike that she had sold stories about Lula to the press. She had also asked Lula for some money to find her biological son, but Lula wasn’t interested.