The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose

The Mystery Guest on my coffee table, January 2024

I’d been eagerly awaiting the follow-up to Nita Prose’s 2022 debut novel The Maid: A Novel.  If you’ve read The Maid, you know it’s a cracking good mystery centred around a murder at a boutique hotel called the Regency Grand Hotel. But what really drew me in was the central character, Molly Gray, the maid who finds the murdered guest. (Molly the maid!).  Stephen King called Molly, “…the most interesting (and endearing) main character in a long time”, and I couldn’t agree more.  When I hit the final page, read the final sentence, I wanted to dive right back into Molly’s world.

The Mystery Guest takes place five years after the ending of The Maid.  Molly is now the Head Maid at the Regency Grand Hotel.  She’s very proud of her “lofty position” and happy at work, until, in Molly’s words, a new “situation” arises: another guest has been murdered. This time, it’s a famous author who drops dead in the hotel’s tearoom just before he is to make a big announcement, after drinking from a poisoned teacup.  Who poisoned him?  Why?  In the well-established tradition of the best whodunnits there are a number of suspects, including, possibly, Molly herself.

I started The Mystery Guest one afternoon, read through until late evening, then finished it the next morning.  Definitely a binge-worthy read!