The Maid: a review
The Maid is a mystery/thriller set in the Regency Grand Hotel, where Molly the Maid blends into the background, existing in plain sight but largely invisible. The exposition is promising because a hotel maid is often forgotten, or at most reduced to a passive observer, when she’s a resilient and intelligent protagonist with her own judgements, aspirations, and secrets. A character worth exploring. She’s the person who empties the trash, tosses out hidden receipts, tidies belongings, and who learns so much about a someone else, while hidden under professional invisibility. She can tell if her guest slept in their sheets, alone or with someone else.
Molly is a special girl though, in the sense that she struggles with social skills, misreads intentions, takes things extremely literally, and is labelled as a bit of an oddball by her fellow coworkers. I don’t think this first-person description of Molly was done badly, but it was exhausting to read. Sometimes she has reactions and thoughts that are so stubborn that we as the reader have to try to separate her personal take from what’s actually going on, and search for unspoken cues in the room.
The book progresses as a murder of a prominent hotel guest is discovered, and Molly is swivelled into the centre of the case. The plot is pretty clear. The first few chapters open up the case and the murder unfolds. The latter half tidies it up cleanly, with only half a dozen of major characters entering and exiting, and only a quarter of characters ever under the scrutiny of suspicion. Finally, the case is carefully unwrapped again and tidied up. The author left crumbs of a surprise in the epilogue, for an extra crunch to blindside the reader, which also added to the depth and complexity of the characters. But to me, the story felt juvenile because it’s so cleanly cut out. Molly’s strong propensity to attempt to do the “right” thing all the time and avoid the “wrong” intensifies this. Congrats to Nita for a refreshing debut as an emerging Canadian author! The marketing of this book was done exceptionally well. but was a filler book for me.
Onwards to the next read.
