The Maid by Nita Prose - review

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Title: The Maid

Author: Nita Prose

Genre: Murder Mystery

Pages: 304

My rating: ★★★★☆

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Molly Gray is not your average maid. She’s a super maid. She blends into the background seamlessly, she’s deferential to guests, and, most importantly of all, she’s obsessed with cleaning. “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” Gran always used to say and Molly has taken it to heart. She’s different in other ways too. She’s astoundingly detail-oriented, has a knack for aphorisms, and sometimes has trouble understanding social cues and facial expressions. So, when an esteemed guest shows up dead in his room and Molly is the one to find him, she finds herself embroiled in a web of deceit. As the fingers start to point at her, Molly must do entangle the web in order to find the real killer.

It’s been a long time since I’ve read such a unique murder mystery. Molly’s detail-oriented and dry first-person narrative are a fresh take on the genre. I was equal parts amused and exasperated with her awkward social interactions (particularly of the romantic persuasion), but, rest assured, I was always laughing with her and not at her.

Because we have such an attentive narrator, many things are obvious to the reader that Molly herself is unable to grasp at first. This left me clutching the ends of my seat and cringing at Molly’s endearing naïveté, but she’s just one of those characters you can’t help but love and root for. Although this might seem that the story is predictable, it’s anything but. Just as you think you have everything figured out, the author throws a curveball at you, all the way to the very end of the novel.

A heartwarming whodunnit, that is equal parts tale about friendship and belonging, as it is about murder and mystery, “The Maid” combines excellent storytelling with just the right amount of mushy heart stuff. With prose like that, can’t wait to see more from Nita Prose (insert ba dum tss sound here).