Library Limelights 272

 

Nita Prose. The Maid. Toronto: Viking/Penguin, 2022.

“We’re all the same in different ways” applies to Molly Gray, our narrator, as per her recently deceased granny’s saying. This stunning debut novel from a Toronto author is unlike any other crime novel you’ve read. Molly performs her job as a maid at a grand hotel with immense pride and care. She delights in attending professional development seminars run by the hotel manager, Mr Snow. But with the exception of Juan Manuel, a kitchen worker, and Rodney, the bartender, she is treated with scorn or mockery for her stilted language and fixation with hygiene and proper etiquette. Not to forget Mr. Preston, the impressive doorman, who has the aura of a guardian angel. She harbours some romantic feelings for Rodney that she persuades herself are mutual. Tips from wealthy guests, like the Blacks, help Molly with her problematic rent at home. Mrs Black – Giselle – becomes a friend of sorts, as they converse during the daily suite cleaning. It’s clear even to naive Molly that Giselle’s husband, who is rude to all and sundry, is an abuser.

No one seems unhappy when Mr Black is found dead in bed one morning, except hotel management, having to deal with the media uproar. Unluckily it was Molly who found the body and promptly fainted. Clandestine illegal activity within the hotel and Molly’s literal expressiveness combine to make the police target her as a murderer. With her trusting, well-ordered life shattered, she almost goes to pieces; it feels worse than the betrayal when her first boyfriend stole her savings account money. But Molly has friends after all. Mr Preston produces a surprise to turn things around. This is an awkward, lovable, unforgettable “worker bee” who shines a light on all around her.

One-liners

▪ As I place a hand on the shining brass railing and walk up the scarlet steps that lead to the hotel’s majestic portico, I’m Dorothy entering Oz. (8)

▪ “Is this a good time for me to return your suite to a state of perfection?” I asked. (31)

▪ “I’m actually quite gifted when it comes to obeying rules.” (181)

▪ “The closets are small, but I’m a bit of a wizard when it comes to spatial organization.” (186)

▪ I smile at Rodney, but inside I’m pouring a full kettle of boiling water onto his dirty, lying face. (213)

▪ I’m so surprised by this sudden display of affection that my arms flail out and I forget that the correct thing to do is to hug back. (235)

Multi-liners

▪ Cheryl may be my boss, but she is not my superior. There is a difference, you know. (22)

▪ “You might consider leaving Mr. Black. He hurts you. You’re better off without him.” (53)

▪ “You’re like a sister to me, you know that? A sister who sometimes says crazy shit and likes dusting way too much, but a sister nonetheless.” (113)

▪ “She called them her ‘benz friends’ or her ‘chill pills.’ I believe ‘benz’ is a medicine of some sort?” (189)

▪ We ran through scenarios and I perfected my answers to all the questions they could come up with. We acted out all the possible things that could go wrong. (206)

Friend

Giselle is good like that. Instead of making me feel stupid, she helps me understand things. “Molly, you stand too close to people, you know that? You have to back off a bit, not get right in people’s faces when you talk to them. Imagine your trolley is between you and that other person, even if it’s not really there.” (47-8)

Party remnants?

In a low voice, he said, “You weren’t supposed to see any of this.”

“See what?” I asked. “The colossal mess all of you have made in this room?”

One of the behemoths spoke up then. “Lady, we’ve just cleaned everything up good.”

“Well,” I said. “You’ve done a substandard job. As you can see, the carpet needs a vacuum. Your footprints are all over it. See that? How the pile is disturbed by the front door, and then over there, by the bathroom? It looks like a herd of elephants tromped through here. Not to mention this side table. Who ate powdered doughnuts without a plate? And these big, fat fingerprints. No offense, but how could you not notice those? They’re all over the glass top. I’ll have to polish every doorknob too.” (85-6)

Arrested

“Molly, do you agree to be represented by me?”

I don’t say a word.

“Molly?” she prods.

“You instructed me not to speak. Should I speak now?”

“My apologies. I wasn’t clear. You can speak, just not anything relating to the charges lain. Let me ask you again: do you agree to be represented by me?”

“Oh yes, that would be most helpful,” I say. “Can we discuss a payment plan at a more convenient time?”

Mr. Preston coughs into his hand.

“I’d offer you a tissue, Mr. Preston, but I’m afraid I don’t have one on me.” I eye Detective Stark, who is shaking her head. (174-5)

Michael Connelly. The Dark Hours. USA: Little, Brown and Company, 2021.

Connelly’s knowledge of Los Angeles policing administration, policies, attitudes, technology, and cop legwork are as meticulously evident as ever, as Renée Ballard takes front and centre with a retired Harry Bosch as her unofficial sidekick. Working the night shift, she’s temporarily assigned with Lisa Moore on solving sexual assault cases committed by a team of two men; the Midnight Men they are dubbed. Lisa is not pulling her weight. One night the shooting of auto shop owner Javier Raffa occurs during Ballard’s shift. Ballard soon makes significant progress with this case, although her boss Robinson-Reynolds says it is to be handed over to a different department. The shell casing of the bullet that killed Raffa matches an unsolved murder that Bosch remembers. With deep digging and Bosch’s backup, Ballard is on the path to identify the killer and some unsavoury business practices—and she wants the credit for it. She can put up with the sexism and misogyny and rivalry on the job but expects recognition for good work.

Meanwhile the Midnight Men strike again, requiring compassionate victim interviews. The two intriguing cases Ballard is working are both complicated, unpeeling layers of cover-up, often involving hours of driving. Ballard’s attention to detail can cause her to make unorthodox, spontaneous decisions, leading to some hair-raising scenes. Never mind the policing reprimands she has to undergo and the inequities that chafe her sense of justice. Covid-19 is integrated easily, naturally, into the story, as is Bosch’s part. I may have commented before that Connelly credibly appropriates the voice of a dedicated woman of excellent instincts. Once it gets rolling, the book is hard to put down; Connelly rocks with all the atmosphere and turmoil of the LAPD “late show” detectives.

One-liners

▪ Police work could easily hollow you out. (33)

▪ After a year of pandemic and anti-police sentiment, commitment to the job was sometimes hard to find. (61)

▪ “Her hesitation was most likely about making a report to a department and officers who don’t give a shit and don’t view rape as much of a crime.” (62)

▪ And it renewed her resolve to catch these two men, no matter what help she got or did not get from Lisa Moore. (104)

▪ “I guess drillin’ teeth is drillin’ for gold.” (148)

▪ “You can’t put a fourteen-foot streetlight in a van, and that’s what we’re most often doing—replacing the whole assembly.” (227-8)

Multi-liners

▪ Ballard had long realized that Moore had lost her empathy. Working sex cases full-time probably did that. (33)

▪ “It’s a high-interest business loan that is sort of a bridge loan. It’s secured by your accounts receivable.” (54)

▪ “For some people, the wolf breaks into the house. With people like Albert, they invite the wolf in.” (55)

▪ “I don’t want people to know about this. Why do you think I thought about it for so long before calling you people?” (88)

▪ “All we need is to drag another cop into another scandal. Don’t you get that?” (203)

▪ “This department is so fucked up. It’s like we don’t even care about victims anymore. It’s protect and serve the image instead of the citizens.” (269)

▪ “You jeopardized an entire investigation just to spite Robinson-Reynolds for putting you on nights. And I know you calculated that I would get the blame for this. So fuck you, Lisa.” (323)

▪ Bosch was the constant. He was more steadfast than the whole department. (353)

Information interrupted

“What’s going on, Renée?”

“She was about to name the money man,” Ballard said. “She called him a street banker and said he was a cop. Then Davenport jumped in and shut it down. He acted all noble like he was trying to protect the department. But I don’t buy it. I think she was about to reveal something he knew about.” (204)

Injured on Duty (IOD)

Bosch was an example. He was exposed to radioactive material on a case. Ten years later, when it manifested as a form of leukemia, the city tried to look the other way because he had never filed an IOD form. Luckily, he had good doctors and a good lawyer and came out okay. (230)

The Boss

It was Lieutenant Robinson-Reynolds calling to inform her she had been suspended for insubordination until further notice. The lieutenant was formal and used a monotone in the delivery of the notice. But then he went off the record and expressed his disappointment in her in terms of what her actions meant to him. “You made me look bad, Ballard,” he said. “You embarrassed me, running through the night on this—and I have to hear it first from West Bureau command? I hope they roll you out of the department for this. And I’ll be right there, waiting to help.”

He disconnected before hearing Ballard’s response.

“They tried to kill me,” she said into the dead phone. (306-7)

Flynn Berry. A Double Life. Ebook download from TPL. UK: Viking/Penguin Books, 2018.

The brutal murder of Emma, nanny to an aristocratic family, is based on the real life case of the infamous Lord Lucan who, as the main suspect, disappeared. To this day, his whereabouts and whether he committed the crime, are unknown. Dr. Claire Alden is the daughter of Colin, Lord Spenser, more than twenty years after he disappeared in the exact same way and circumstances. Claire drives this story with her fixation on finding her father, assuming he is still alive. “Sightings” are still being reported; media coverage was so persistent the remaining family had to change their names and move away. A police theory is that Spenser mistook the nanny for his wife Faye in poor lighting, and indeed when Faye came running to the screams, she too was attacked but escaped outside. An alternate theory is that a stranger had entered the home and attacked the women. As an eight-year-old, Claire did not believe her beloved father could have done such a thing. Her emotional journey up to the present day is unclear—does she love, hate, or fear him?

Colin’s friends had never accepted lower-class Faye from the beginning, indeed they accuse her of lying about the murderous attack. Nothing can be proved, but Claire gradually believes his disappearance was engineered by his friends, like Rose and James Fraser, whom she remembers from childhood. And his friend Sam, who just happened to have a pilot’s licence at the time. Surely the disappearance signals guilt. Claire explores every sighting she can, all fruitless. Convinced that Rose and James must know where he went or be in touch with him, she makes friends with their daughter Alice, gaining access to their home. She gets lucky, so the plot thickens—slightly. Basically the plot is merely an obsessive hunt to face an unscrupulous man in person. Unfortunately, the characters are little more than two-dimensional. They fail to project any real human emotion, right from the courtship of Faye and Colin to the dubious climax.

Bits

▪ He might have left his car by the cliff deliberately, to make it look like suicide. (97)

▪ “Your father was angry with me. He wasn’t angry with you.” (101)

▪ It took me a long time to stop loving him. (108)

▪ According to them, she’d hired someone to kill Emma and framed my father. (121)

▪ I want them to know what they did, and the effort of not telling them, right now, is making my teeth grate. (197)

▪ “I don’t want to tell you,” I say, and she keeps walking. “Please just help me.” (206)

▪ A better person would forgive him. (226)

▪ I need to know who he is. A good man who did a bad thing. A bad man who’s done more bad things. (235)

▪ Alice might have told her parents about me, but our secrets are evenly weighted, none of us will talk. (267)