Meet Molly the Maid

Why I loved a novel about cleaning and murder

To hear the related 5-minute audio file that I uploaded today as my Morning Journal flash briefing for Alexa devices, please click on the play button:

If you feel sad, just grab a duster, Buster!

Molly Gray’s grandmother, aka Gran, passed away before this story begins. But Gran’s wisdom, captured in pithy bromides like “when you assume, you make an A-S-S out of U and ME” form the psychic backbone of Molly’s tale.

And what a tale it is!

I won’t give any spoilers here, except to say Molly one day at her job as a maid at a fancy hotel discovers the dead body of a man appropriately named Mr. Black.

I finished The Maid last night, and I bet I will try the second in the series, The Mystery Guest.

As we prepare to leave for France in three days, I have started a new novel which looks promising. It’s The Great Swindle by Pierre Lemaitre. A reviewer in Le Monde called the book “a masterly epic of post-war France, where impostures triumph and capitalists grow rich.”