The Maid by Nita Prose

​We are often too quick to dismiss those on a different neural spectrum in a pejorative way, aren’t we? Words we use – as in The Maid by Nita Prose – include ‘odd’ and 'quirky,' sometimes even ‘rude.’ We assume that we are in the moral and verbal ascendancy and that such characters are somehow inferior to us because they behave differently, react differently or sometimes don’t even react at all. Those who are unable to pick up verbal and non-verbal clues as we do, without even thinking about the process going on ‘normally’ in our brains, are dismissed; made fun of via a range of hackneyed epithets around pork pies and the like.

Having a close acquaintance who is quite clearly somewhere ‘on the autism spectrum’ has enabled me to think twice before opening my mouth and making a quick, pithy judgement – usually to entertain others. However, I do not always remember to be kind, much to my shame. I suspect that Nita Prose had a muse for her Molly the Maid character. Perhaps, in writing this novel, she too is trying to make up for her own misunderstanding or deliberate non-understanding of such neurodiverse people. I hope that my greater efforts to appreciate the world that such people see, hear and speak to have helped me both as a writer and more importantly as a person out there in our largely unforgiving society.

To that end, I think I was more patient than many readers might be when encountering Molly and the immense detail with which she describes her world. Her late grandmother was clearly her moral compass early in life and that lady’s oft-repeated phrases are as signposts for Molly to follow. My personal favourite was: ‘Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.’

Many of us know, within our more developed powers of reasoning, that this might not be true, but if hope is both a catalyst and an elixir there are surely worse drugs. Molly is ridiculed, disliked or simply used by other members of staff at her hotel. Gradually we realise that she is not the pushover they all think she is; she just needs time to process unknown or unexpected situations (such as finding a hotel guest dead in his room) properly. Thankfully she has friends such as the lovely doorman, Mr Preston, and his resourceful daughter who act like guardian angels (which is when we are reminded that this is a work of fiction).

Other crimes around immigration are touched on and, as with the principal murder, greed proves to be the main motivator. Molly’s character is held up as a mirror to such selfishness as her simple and selfless understanding of what is right and what is wrong informs her every decision at each crossroads she arrives at (although she is not entirely blameless in some of the actions she takes, which I felt gave the third dimension to her character we could identify with).

I was much more interested in how her perception of the villains in her midst would play out rather than the mystery of the murder itself, though there were some interesting twists there too. I did feel that, in urging us to understand her through urging her to understand us, there were too many two-dimensional characters in the book – mere placeholders for the dish being served up to us.

This is the first in a series of Molly the Maid mysteries, with The Mystery Guest due to be published in the UK shortly. I’m not sure that I would read another in the series as the character is so important to me and I already get it. Different situations at different times wouldn’t really add to my enjoyment, knowing that, truthfully, Molly’s character may learn from previous events but not in the way they might teach us, going forwards. Molly doesn’t have the neural luxuries that most of us take for granted; at least in this book those who take her for granted have a rude awakening – and that should cheer souls everywhere.

---