With the warm weather approaching, the Mystery Book Club will take a summer break. Over the past four years, the MBC has read many enthralling mysteries. Our stories have taken us from the Maine woods, through America and then across the globe. What a wonderful way to meet the characters in our books and experience the world!

As a group, we have learned much about human nature - both bad and good. Some of our characters have been subjected to bias, bigotry and indifference. The author's subject matter often helps enlighten our understanding of the human psyche.

This month, our group gave “The Maid'' by Nita Prose an A+. It's the story of twenty-five year old Molly Gray who is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and misreads the intentions of others. Her grand-mother helps to interpret the world for her, but when gram dies she has to navigate life's complexities by herself. Her orderly life is upended when, at the hotel where she is employed as a maid, a guest is found dead and she becomes the lead suspect.

Where did the idea of “The Maid'' come from? Prose tells it this way, “In 2019 when on a business trip, I returned to my hotel room and completely startled the maid. I remember stepping back into a shadowing corner and the embarrassing part is that she had in her hands my track pants which like a fool I left in a tangled mess on my bed. It was then that I realized how being a maid was such an intimate and invisible job. On the plane home her main character came to life like a lightning bolt. Molly's voice was clear, crisp and precise. I grabbed a napkin from under my drink and wrote the prologue to the novel in a single burst.”

Prose has talked about how important a powerful character is to the audience, the fundamental quality to a good story. As our very own Stephen King said, “It was the most interesting and endearing main character in a long time.”. “The Maid” has been picked up by Universal Pictures to be adapted into film and is currently in development with actress Florence Pugh in the lead role.

Happy reading mystery lovers!