Tuesday, January 4, 2022
The Maid by Nita Prose
THE MAID
by debut author (and long-time editor) Nita Prose is vaguely reminiscent of
Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Both involve
a mysterious death and a character with a unique, often wise, perspective. Here,
Molly Graves is a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel and as she points out, “My uniform
is my freedom. It is the ultimate
invisibility cloak.” Extremely observant, but struggling with social cues and
niceties, Molly has been raised by her Gran who died recently so Molly has
no-one with whom to process the day’s events. Instead, the reader is invited to
share Molly’s stream of consciousness thinking about finding a dead body, about
her attraction to the hotel’s bar keeper, about her greedy boss and other co-workers,
and even about some of the guests. Throughout, Molly charmingly avoids problems
(getting arrested as the main murder suspect, for one) and relies on Gran’s
advice: “Vile and evil are composed of the same letters. One begets the other.”
or “Everything will be OK in the end. If it’s not OK, it’s not the end.” And
what an ending for Molly –THE MAID is a January 2022 LibraryReads selection, received a starred review from Library Journal
and this entertaining, character-driven mystery is rumored to have been
optioned as a movie.
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