The Maid by Nita Prose

Ballantine Books, 304 pages, $27

“The Maid” sets an impossible level of cleanliness and joy for hotel and motel cleaning people to reach. Molly Gray, the maid in this book by Canadian Nita Prose, aspires to perfection in cleaning the rooms in the Regency Grand Hotel. The city which is home for the hotel is never named. That’s too bad because I’d stay there — except for the murder and criminal shenanigans, that is. Right, it’s fiction anyway.

In many ways, except for a puzzling bit at the end — I’ll get to that as a spoiler — it was a perfect, soothing book. Molly is someone to love and admire. She has social problems. She can’t read people’s expressions and cannot judge the intention of people speaking to her. She pretty much takes everything at face value, insofar as she can figure out what the face is doing. Before her grandmother died, Molly could bring the questions from her day’s activities home and have her grandmother explain the cues Molly missed. It looks as though Molly is on the autism spectrum, although author Prose doesn’t say that explicitly.

Molly’s grandmother was a  housekeeper for rich people, and she taught Molly the right way to clean. Taking the job at the Regency is a no-brainer, especially since one of her grandmother’s dear friends is Mr. Preston, the doorman, and he can help look after Molly, not that there’s anything wrong with Molly’s brain, just her understanding of social interactions and her anxiety issues.

The story begins after Molly’s grandmother has been dead for a few months. Having been swindled out of her grandmother’s savings and no longer having her grandmother’s paycheck, Molly has found herself in a financial quandary. She can no longer afford to live in her apartment, run down and overpriced though it is. The bright spot in her life is cleaning rooms at her second home: the Regency.

A lot of the staff dismiss Molly. She is invisible to most of the rest of the world, but that’s the way she likes it. She gets along with a couple of the other maids, but her supervisor is conniving, unkind, and a cheat. Molly just keeps her head down and takes pride in what she does, even when she knows her boss is stealing the tip money from her and the other maids.

One of the bright spots in Molly’s cleaning day is doing the Blacks’ suite. Mr. Black is rich, an important man, by his own lights, and has a beautiful, much younger wife. They stay at the hotel often while Mr. Black transacts business. His wife, Giselle, relies on the company of Molly when she comes to clean. Molly considers her a friend. But how much of a friend can a rich woman be to a hotel maid?

One day, when Molly has to return to the Blacks’ suite to finish cleaning, she finds the body of Mr. Black sprawled across the bed and Mrs. Black nowhere in sight. He is dead. When she calls the “penguins” at the front desk in a panic, they ignore her. She faints. When she recovers, Mr. Black is still dead. This time, Molly asks for the manager, Mr. Snow, and finally, the police and ambulance arrive. Eventually, it is determined Mr. Black was murdered.

A severe, no-nonsense police detective interviews Molly. She doesn’t catch on that Molly’s perspective is different than most people’s and decides that Molly is a suspicious person. Readers know Molly is the most innocent, naive, truthful, loyal person around. Maybe. The book is told in her voice, so just how reliable is she?

The other hotel characters are Juan Manuel, the dishwasher, and Rodney, the bartender. Molly has a crush on Rodney and has misinterpreted what he has said to her in the past. Other than when she is in the hotel, Molly now leads a lonely, isolated life. At one point, someone hugs Molly and she reflects on how long it has been since someone has touched her. Heartbreaking.

This is not a sad book, however. Yes, Molly gets into jams because of how she misunderstands people and situations, and she is sad when she finds out something is not what it seemed. But she is resilient. She hears her grandmother’s voice in her head, full of grandmotherly advice, when the going gets rocky. She takes great comfort in structure and cleanliness. For instance, she takes off her shoes every night when she gets back to her apartment, wipes the soles, and puts them in her closet. That sort of detail is endearing to me.

As expected, Molly gets into hot water over Mr. Black’s death and it is no surprise to mystery readers when she becomes the prime suspect. At her lowest point, she wonders who she can turn to for help in her restricted world. Surprises await. The best surprise is how deep the book bores into Molly's life without over-narrating those parts.

I highly recommend “The Maid.” I thought it was charming. I like to read about characters cleaning things. I love Marie Kondo (although I must say, desire and practice may have a wide chasm between them in my real world). A shiny, dustless MBTB star for “The Maid,” the first of 2022! (Plus, what a great cover!)

Kind of a SPOILER:

Towards the end, Molly is in court. One of the attorneys is Charlotte. Why? Is Canadian law different from U.S. law? If the story takes place in a fictional country, are their trials held in a different fashion? Is dispensation given to Molly to have Charlotte question her? Huh?