The Maid won the 2022 Goodreads Choice Awards for Mystery & Thriller, an award based on readers’ votes, and it is also Prose’s debut novel—I’m jealous! I’m also here to say that it is thoroughly deserving. What’s more, Florence Pugh is starring in the lead role for the movie, currently in production. It is time for you to read it now, before you see the movie, as it is a witty, funny, well-crafted book.

While all the characters are three-dimensional and believable as people, the two you will truly love are Molly Gray and her Gran. We get to know Gran through Molly’s recollections and flashbacks, as she died several months before the story begins. Molly is what would currently be called neurodivergent— she clearly has Asperger’s syndrome, making her socially awkward, unable to understand people’s emotional states and reactions. Her own responses are rigid and scripted, mostly coming from Gran’s platitudes (A friend in need is a friend indeed, for example), or her boss Mr. Snow’s professional development training (offering a tissue box to a crying guest and suggesting, “A tissue for your issue?”). Molly’s mother leaves Molly with Gran, taking off with Molly’s father and getting deeply addicted to drugs. Molly learns that her mother only writes Gran when she needs money, and the day the letters stop, Gran knows her daughter must be dead of overdose. Gran raises Molly, and they are a tight-knit team. Gran clearly knows how to love and teach Molly, giving her easy to remember truisms to help her make choices in daily life, which Molly finds especially challenging. Their daily routine includes chores done on particular days, such as “Dust we must!”. Gran works as a maid for a wealthy family, and while she tries to guide Molly to aspire for a higher station in life, Molly is pleased to be a maid, especially after she lands the maid position at the Regency Grand Hotel. She derives much pleasure and satisfaction “restoring rooms to a state of perfection”, working quickly and efficiently.

Molly develops a friendship with an occupant of one of the penthouse suites, Giselle Black, the young, second, trophy wife of Mr. Black, real estate mogul. Giselle is kind to Molly, tipping her well, and treating her with respect. She shares the difficulties in her marriage, the verbal and physical abuse she suffers, the constant moving from city to city, when all she desires is to settle down in a home of her own. The genius of this book is that Molly discovers Mr. Black dead in his bed when she goes to clean their suite.

Given Molly’s condition, things aren’t always what they seem to be. Knowing who to trust, understanding who is truthful and who is lying, knowing who is a friend and who means her harm, these are all major challenges for her. Having to face all of this without her Gran is the hardest part, as we see Molly flashback to her own Gran’s final illness and death, memories brought on by the trauma of finding Mr. Black “in flagrente.”

This novel is known as a cozy mystery, in that there is a murder mystery to be solved, but no significant blood or danger. It is a tangled mystery, with suspense for sure, but no real sense of serious danger for our main character. It is a clever, well structured book, especially with a protagonist who witnesses the action, but is somewhat unreliable in her own unique way. Just as Gran said, “We are all the same, in our own different way”, and “Everything will be all right in the end. If it isn’t alright, it isn’t the end yet.” I have tried not to spoil any surprises, and there is a terrific twist in the epilogue that I never saw coming. Highly recommended.