Molly Gray returns in Nita Prose’s The Mystery Guest, the follow-up to her sprightly debut, The Maid. Molly, now head maid at New York’s Regency Grand Hotel, finds herself in the middle of another murder investigation when a famous author keels over in the middle of the hotel’s tearoom in front of an audience of mystery fans. Things are predicably chaotic and Molly longs to return everything to its usual state of perfection. Unfortunately for Molly, her keen observational skills turn out to be the key to figuring out who had it in for the author.
On the day author J.D. Grimthorpe dies, Molly is much more excited by the fact that the hotel’s renovated tea room is being used again. She enjoys a properly laid-out tea. To make sure that everything goes well, Molly accompanies her mostly silent trainee maid as the young woman wheels in a special tea service for Grimthorpe—and to fend off questions from the very assertive members of Grimsthorpe’s fan following. And everything is going well…until Grimthorpe drops dead and chaos erupts in the tea room. Things get worse when Detective Stark—the detective who hounded Molly during The Maid—turns up to find out what happened.
Molly does her best to stay out of the way for much of the book. She might have managed it, too, if it hadn’t been for her meddling friend Angela, her old nemesis Cheryl, and the credulous members of Grimthorpe’s fan group constantly drawing her into the mystery. There’s also the fact that Molly knows a lot more about Grimthorpe than she’s willing to admit. Molly’s childhood memories reveal even more reasons why someone would want to kill the author—and also help Molly unlock some of the secrets in her own family history.
The first chapters of The Mystery Guest are a little uneven but the book improves as the mystery evolves. I loved seeing all the returning characters from The Maid (even short-tempered Detective Stark, to be honest), too. Molly’s neurodivergence makes her a very interesting amateur detective. I really enjoy the fact that she’s so reluctant to get involved while, at the same time, is so good at spotting important details and working out how things fit together. I appreciate the change from so many other amateur detectives who only bludgeon their way into murder investigations because they have to keep a friend or relative from being unjustly accused or because they are irrepressibly nosy.