Genre: Cozy mystery

I really like Molly - the protagonist of Nita Prose’s The Mystery Guest. This follow up to The Maid does not disappoint as we come to know Molly a bit better. While you can certainly read The Mystery Guest and understand it without having read The Maid, I very much recommend both. Molly takes great pride in being the head maid at the Regency Grand Hotel. So when a famous author dies on what she considers her watch, she is very invested in figuring out what happened. She has been involved in a murder investigation before and much to police detective Stark’s dismay, she feels more than capable of being involved again. She doesn’t even realize how much she will have to dig into her past to move forward here.

Molly does not respond as one might expect to social cues - she often sees the world a bit differently than others. Part of what I like about the books is that she is never labeled - we just get to know her through the narration. We learn in this book a great deal about how Gran (her late grandmother) raised her - most especially that she valued Molly’s uniqueness - celebrating it rather than trying to label and “fix” her. Even when Gran removes her from a school situation where Molly is not quite understood, Gran is preparing her for a successful future through experience. Prose cleverly moves back and forth between this past and the present day mystery where we see how Molly’s unique way of thinking is often an asset in putting together clues in ways that Detective Stark can’t see. Their developing relationship is also a strength of this book for me. I tend toward focusing on character development in all of my reading - across genres, but the cozy mystery here is engaging. I like the kind of mystery that takes me back to my Clue board game playing days, where slowly over time clues are discovered and connections can be made - if we’re taking good notes. Prose pays attention to detail here, and the mystery develops in this way.

I seldom research a book or its author before writing about them here because the objective is to communicate my impressions and how a book has impacted me. But after I worked on this a bit, I found myself curious about how Prose intended to portray Molly. I found her words in an article by Simon published on the Shondaland website. Prose says,

I felt that if I waved a big sign on the cover copy or if Molly herself had a diagnosis, it would be too easy for the reader to place her in a box, to decide what she was, to label her,” the author explains. Instead, Prose hopes that readers — who “understand rightfully that there’s something unique about her personality, something very different about how her brain works” — will approach Molly with an open mind. “What I want the reader to do is step into her shoes, live as her, see themselves behind her eyes, and experience for a moment not life as themselves, but life through her particular gaze and her worldview,” she says. “I think only through that experience can we really have true empathy.”

She goes on to report having heard from many readers who feel a connection to Molly. The power of books and reading is clearly illustrated here through an author who creates a character, gives her freedom from labeling, who ultimately feels representative to many of her readers. As a YA librarian, I wanted all of my kids to feel seen in the books of my collection. So I suppose writing about books is the way I am trying to continue to connect readers and books. In the case of The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose - you can either relate to Molly or recognize the value of getting to know people like Molly with empathy. And you get a great mystery in the meantime. I also love the hope that resonates in the work at one point, Molly notes, “Gran always found hope and what is hope but shining light into the darkness.” Yes. Great bookish stuff!

Simon, R. (2023, November 28). ‘the maid’ author Nita Prose was scared to write a sequel to ...
Shondaland. https://www.shondaland.com/inspire/books/a45920144/the-maid-author-nita-prose-was-scared-to-write-a-sequel-to-her-best-selling-novel/