The Maid

Nita Prose’s debut novel The Maid (Ballantine Books, 2022) is a cozy detective mystery. It is an international bestseller, a Good Morning America Book Club Pick, and received the Ned Kelly Award for International Crime Fiction. The Maid is currently in development as a film starring Florence Pugh. Nita Prose is a longtime editor, serving many bestselling authors and their books. She lives in Toronto, Canada.

This guide refers to the 2022 Kindle edition of The Maid.

Plot Summary

Twenty-five-year-old Molly Gray is a little odd and out of step with the world, but she loves her job as a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel. One Monday, Molly walks into Mr. and Mrs. Black’s suite and finds Mr. Black dead. Molly phones the front desk for help then glances in the mirror. She sees the presumed murderer behind her and passes out.

The narrative flashes back to earlier that day. Molly greeted Mr. Preston the doorman and asked after his daughter Charlotte—a high-powered lawyer—then she went to the kitchen to see Juan Manuel, the dishwasher. She gave him a key card for Room 308. He is homeless, and Molly’s friend Rodney, the barman, lets him sleep in unused rooms. Molly saw Rodney next. She has a crush on him and appreciates that he is kind to Juan Manuel. Moving on to her roster of rooms, Molly reached the Blacks’ suite and was almost knocked over by Mr. Black leaving the rooms. His wife, Molly’s friend Giselle, was crying in the bathroom, so Molly cleaned the rest of the suite and planned to come back in the afternoon to do the bathroom. Molly knows that Giselle’s husband abuses her.

Flashing forward, the lead investigator, Detective Stark, interviews Molly at the police station. Molly tells Detective Stark what she decides the detective needs to know; she had entered the Black’s suite and seen nothing out of place except an unlabeled pill bottle and pills spilled on the bedside table. She says nothing about the person she saw behind her in the mirror.

Tuesday morning, Rodney asks her to meet him after her shift and tell her everything she said to the police. Molly is excited. This will be their second date.

Molly meets Rodney in the hotel bar and tells him everything she saw in the hotel room. Rodney gives Molly his phone number and tells her to call him if the police bother her again. When Molly arrives home, she finds Giselle waiting for her. Giselle confesses that she and Mr. Black had fought that morning just before Molly arrived. She asks Molly for a favor. She hid a gun in the overhead fan in the bathroom, and she needs Molly to get it and return it to her.

Wednesday, Molly’s supervisor tells her to clean the Blacks’ suite now that the police are done with it. Molly retrieves Giselle’s gun and hides it in the filter bag in her vacuum cleaner. As she does, she finds Mr. Black’s wedding ring amid the dirt and takes it. She remembers Giselle telling her that Mr. Black had taken off his ring and thrown it in a fit of temper. Detective Stark then takes Molly to the station for more questioning. The police have been talking to Molly’s coworkers, who say that Molly is more friendly with Giselle than Molly led them to believe. Molly is now a person of interest. When the police let her go, Molly returns home, telephones Rodney and tells him that the police suspect her of killing Mr. Black. She asks him to get the gun from her vacuum cleaner and return it to Giselle.

Thursday morning, Detective Stark arrests Molly for theft, possession of drugs and a firearm, and first-degree murder. Molly calls Mr. Preston. He comes to the police station with his daughter Charlotte. Charlotte posts bail for Molly, then she and Mr. Preston take Molly home. Charlotte asks Molly to explain the drug and weapons charges, and Molly confesses about the gun and Mr. Black’s ring. Rodney is the only person she told. Charlotte and Mr. Preston explain that Rodney has been forcing Juan Manuel to cut drugs for him, and Molly realizes Rodney framed her. All attraction to him disappears, and Molly is determined to punish Rodney for his betrayal. While Mr. Preston calls Juan Manuel, Charlotte runs a background check on Rodney. He has a long record of involvement with drugs, petty theft, and assault.

Juan Manuel arrives. He tells Molly he was not involved with Rodney willingly. He wanted to get out, especially after Rodney dragged Molly into it, but he was afraid of what Rodney would do. Juan Manuel tells them Rodney was working with Mr. Black, and then he shows them a picture on his phone of Rodney and Giselle in a passionate embrace. Charlotte says they need proof that either Rodney or Giselle killed Mr. Black. Molly insists that Giselle is innocent. But she doesn’t explain that she knows who the real murderer is.

Mr. Preston comes up with a plan to catch Rodney. Molly “confesses” to him that when the police told her they were going to search the Blacks’ suite again, Molly told them that Juan Manuel had been staying there and that Rodney had been helping him.

Seeing that he is about to be exposed, Rodney tries to get Molly to sneak into the hotel and clean the suite again so that no sign of Juan Manuel (or the drugs) will be there. Molly reminds him that she has been fired, but she might be able to get a key so he can clean the room himself. Rodney agrees to meet her at the hotel. Mr. Preston slips down to housekeeping and steals a master keycard, which he passes to Molly. When Rodney arrives, Molly hands the card to him, then she retreats to a coffee shop across the street from the hotel.

While she waits, Molly telephones Giselle and asks Giselle whether she knew Rodney meant to frame Molly. Giselle denies it and tells Molly she was furious with Rodney when she found out. Molly doesn’t know if she can trust Giselle, but she decides to give her friend a chance. She tells Giselle to get out of the hotel by the back door.

The police arrive, having been tipped off by Charlotte that they will find the murderer in the Blacks’ suite. They emerge from the hotel several minutes later with Rodney and a duffel bag full of white powder. Detective Stark apologizes to Molly for suspecting her. All the charges against her are dropped. They charge Rodney for drug dealing, but they are not able to tie him to the murder.

Juan Manuel has nowhere to stay now, so Molly offers to let him stay with her. He can sleep in her room and she will use her grandmother’s old room. That night, she recalls her grandmother’s last minutes when she begged Molly to help her end her life. The pain from the cancer was unbearable. Molly didn’t want to do it, but Gran swallowed her last four painkillers, and when she was too deeply sedated to know what was happening, Molly held a pillow over her face until she was gone.

Several months later, Rodney’s trial is over. Molly told the jury that, when she looked in the mirror, she saw someone behind her. She didn’t see the face, and at that moment, she wasn’t sure it was real, but now she knows that someone with a powerful motive killed Mr. Black. She looked directly at Rodney as she said it, and he was convicted of the murder.

Molly’s grandmother always told her that truth was subjective. Molly understands that now. She told the truth on the stand, but it was her truth. She saw someone in the mirror behind her clutching a pillow, and the shock did cause her to faint, but it wasn’t Rodney. It was Mr. Black’s ex-wife, the first Mrs. Black. When Molly regained consciousness, Mrs. Black explained that she came to convince her ex-husband to give his daughter Victoria a chance to prove she could run his company. Mr. Black had been drunk and taking pills, and he overdosed. Mrs. Black asked Molly if she ever felt like the wicked are rewarded and the good suffer.

Molly had looked at the pillow lying on the floor beside her and thought about how her grandmother died. Mr. Black had hurt Giselle and dealt drugs out of Molly’s beloved hotel. Molly answered that yes, she felt that way all the time. When Mrs. Black was gone, Molly cleaned the room, removing any evidence that Mrs. Black had been there. Molly sleeps well at night now because she sleeps beside Juan Manuel and because her conscience is clean. She has learned that she has the power to clean away dirt, disinfect, and set things right.