Molly Gray is a hotel maid at the Regency Grand, and she loves her work: the trolley stocked just so, the satisfying return of a messy room to a state of perfection, the quiet dignity of a job done well. Molly sees the world a little differently from other people — she takes language literally, misses social cues, and has relied since childhood on her late Gran's rules to navigate a world she finds bafflingly complicated. As long as everything is in its proper place, she is content.
Then Molly lets herself into the suite of the wealthy, frequently unpleasant Mr. Black and finds him dead in his bed. Because she behaves nothing like people expect a witness to behave, and because she knows more about the hotel's guests and staff than she lets on, Molly quickly becomes the police's prime suspect. To clear her name, she will have to accept help from an unlikely group of allies and learn to tell the difference between the people who mean her well and those who don't.
Nita Prose's debut is a warm, twisty contemporary mystery with the comfort of a cozy and a genuinely original narrator. The Maid is as much a story about being underestimated and finally seen as it is a whodunit, balancing a hotel full of secrets with real tenderness toward its heroine.