The hotel maid is invisible. They enter your room while you are out and when you return the room is spotless and the bed is made. You never think about how it happened. The Maid, part cozy crime, part dark comedic thriller is Canadian Nita Prose’s debut, due for film release this year starring Florence Pugh.

There’s nothing quite like a perfectly stocked maid’s trolley…The crisp little packages of delicately wrapped soaps that smell of orange blossom, the tiny Crabtree and Evelyn shampoo bottles, the squat tissue boxes…And last but not least, the cleaning kit, which includes a feather duster, lemon furniture polish, lightly scented antiseptic garbage bags, as well as an impressive array of spray bottles of solvents and disinfectants, all lined up and ready to combat any stain, be it coffee rings, vomit — or even blood.

Molly doesn’t have much in the world, but she is proud of her job at the Regency Grand Hotel and gets great pleasure from returning occupied hotel rooms to ‘a state of perfection’. Molly also has some limitations. She struggles with understanding social cues and navigating human relationships, which make her vulnerable to exploitation. Her grandmother who she was closest to and who helped her to navigate the world died recently, and she is treated as an outcast by her coworkers.

The longer you live, the more you learn. People are a mystery that can never be solved.

One afternoon she goes to clean the penthouse suite and finds its wealthy guest, Mr Black dead in his bed. Black has been murdered and Molly soon finds herself a key suspect.

One thing I’ve learned in my business is that you can hide dirt for a while, but at some point, it all comes to the surface.

The Maid has had a mixed reception, I suspect because some readers found they could not identify/sympathise with the main character. I found Molly to be endearing and delightful, and the story was a charming, quirky, fun light read, about a socially awkward working class young woman finding resilience in adversity. Molly has been crafted as a unique character and the story has many layers and twists.