The Maid

 By Nita Prose

Ballantine     2022

304 pages     Mystery

I have been pondering all day how to approach my look at The Maid by Nita Prose. I can say that it was an easy, quick read, but that wouldn’t quite do it justice. The most important aspect of the novel is the main character and narrator, Molly, who at 25 is a maid at a five-star hotel in an unnamed city. What sets her apart from other protagonists is that she is definitely on the autism spectrum—something you don’t often see in novels. I particularly remember The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon.

Raised by her grandmother, Molly is a room maid, obsessive in her ability to create a perfect hotel room with every smudge removed, every last hair out of the shower, every corner dusted, and every pillow perfectly plumped. Although we learn perhaps more than we might care to know about hotel rooms and their cleanliness, we early come to understand that Molly finds all her worth in her work. She has a hard time understanding the people around her, but she is the best maid in the building.

More importantly, she realizes that she has trouble reading people’s faces or understanding their intent. She has always relied on her grandmother to narrate the world for her, and now that her grandmother has died, she feels herself very much alone, although she carries on her life just as it has always been. The ordered world that she must inhabit in order to function is upended when she finds the body of Mr. Black, a frequent resident at the hotel, and the husband of Giselle, with whom Molly has become friendly. Molly is considered to be a suspect in the murder, and as she struggles to untangle the web of deceit in the hotel, she finds that she has friends. These friends unite with her to solve the case of Mr. Black’s murder. In many ways, the plot is like a game of Clue.

The other characters in the novel are seen through Molly’s eyes, and she has a hard time interpreting their relationship to her. The NPR reviewer suggests that one of the delights in reading The Maid is watching the “hectic cast of characters unravel” as the crime is properly solved. I also appreciated so much watching Molly mature and learn how the world works and watching her grow in her understanding of people and circumstances.

This is Nita Prose’s first novel and hopefully it won’t be her last. She has had a career as a Canadian book editor, which is evidenced in the way the book is composed—a week in the life of a hotel maid—and in the skilled way the plot evolves. Her understanding of the way Molly functions and her ability to help the reader understand the mind of a person on the autism spectrum is brilliant. I want Molly to solve more crimes. A Canadian reviewer says, “The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different—and reveals that all mysteries can be solved through connection to the human heart.”