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.