What do you do when your debut novel sells a million copies in more than 40 countries and readers beg for more? You write a sequel, and that’s how Toronto author Nita Prose turned The Maid, a delightful cozy mystery featuring a neurodivergent maid named Molly, into a series. (It’s also going to be a movie, starring Florence Pugh.) Book two has landed, and Molly is still returning rooms to a state of perfection. Like the first book, The Mystery Guest is a playful romp through murder and misdirection that begins with a shocking death at the Grand Regency Hotel. 

Chapter 1 opens four years after Molly finds VIP guest Charles Black dead in his bed in The Maid. The revered and reclusive mystery writer J.D. Grimthorpe has just dropped dead on the tearoom floor, minutes before a public announcement about a secret he had been harbouring for years. (Among his 20 titles: The Maid in the Mansion and The Mystery Guest.) 

 

 

It’s a standalone novel, but those who have read The Maid will recognize some beloved characters, like the conniving tip stealer and former head maid, Cheryl; Mr. Preston, the grandfatherly doorman who was a friend of Gran’s; and Detective Stark, who, once again, has Molly in her sights. There are also some new faces, including the riotous and ridiculous members of the J.D. Grimthorpe fan club, the podcast-loving bartender, Angela, and Lily, the meek and mild maid-in-training. 

The Mystery Guest takes us outside the hotel’s walls and back in time, as Prose alternates between the present murder investigation and the past, when Gran was a personal maid at a mansion owned by none other than J.D. Grimthorpe and his snooty, long-suffering wife, and brought Molly to work with her. Gran is just as present in this book as she was in the first, and Molly still relies on her sayings to make sense of the world and the people in it. 

In an telephone interview with Prose – the pen name for Nita Provonost, the Toronto-based vice president and editorial director for the publishing house, Simon & Schuster Canada – she talks about how editing books by thriller writers like Ruth Ware and Linwood Barclay was a 20-year course in mystery writing, how she snuck around hotels to see how far she could infiltrate the back rooms and how she is already at work on book No. 3. 

Kim Honey: Congratulations on The Maid. What was it like to have phenomenal success with a debut novel?

Nita Prose: I still wake up every day feeling like it must have been like some kind of fever dream. Maybe the most gratifying part is that Molly isn’t mine anymore. I know that sounds strange, but I feel like she belongs to the readers now. And the fact that they’re taking care of her, that they care about her, that they want more of her and that they’re interested in her journey, it makes me feel so utterly happy and complete as a writer.

KH: How many books have you signed?

NP: At this point, probably over 30,000 or 40,000.

KH: What’s the most interesting thing someone has talked to you about?

NP: So many people have said they have a Molly in their lives. What that means is somebody who might struggle with social cues or have some sort of difference they deal with on a daily basis that makes them feel like they don’t belong. I love hearing from readers who feel that Molly is somebody they know, whether it’s a sister or a friend or themselves, and the act of reading Molly becomes about being seen, about the fact that we can truly, as Gran says, all be different and yet be the same.

KH: Do you have someone you consult with, to get into the back rooms of a hotel?

NP: Years ago, I worked as an editor on a fabulous book with Charles McPherson called The Butler Speaks. He now works in hotels all over the world, advising them and their staff on proper etiquette and decorum for the modern age. There’s so much I learned about that notion of the guest experiencing perfection when they walk in, and feeling almost like they’re their own king or queen. I also did my own on-the-fly research. I went to a few hotels and I skulked around. I wore all black and I tried to see how far I could get into the hotel and into the back rooms, just by looking like staff and being invisible. As it turns out, you can get pretty far.

KH: How far?

NP: You can open the doors in the kitchen, you can kind of wander around and nobody’s going to stop you if you have the right attitude. If you notice, in a hotel, the workers have a certain attitude of being present but invisible at the same time. It really is a way of comporting yourself, physically.

KH: Which hotels did you visit? 

NP: I’m going to get blacklisted if I tell you. [laughs] There was one in London, and there were about two in Toronto.

KH: It’s got to be the Royal York and the King Eddy in Toronto?

NP: Everybody has their own idea of what hotel the Regency Grand is. I love when a reader comes up to me and says, ‘you know, I thought that hotel was the Baglione in London or the Waldorf Astoria in New York.’ I always say yes, because for me, I give you just the barest outlines of a hotel, and as the reader, it’s your job to fill in the blank. 

I’ll tell you a story about the King Edward Hotel, since you mentioned it. Many years ago, I used to walk by almost every day. I would see the same doorman sitting or standing by his podium – in his greatcoat and his cap – which was up the red-carpeted stairs. He would tip his cap at me and I would smile at him and nod my head. I felt like he was my protector – like he was almost my grandfather, like he was watching out for me. We never spoke, but somehow those little ephemeral moments found their way into the fictional character of Mr. Preston in both books.

KH: In the author’s note, you talk about the Lewes Castle Museum exhibit where you read a story about a 17th century maid who was dismissed for stealing silverware, only to have renovators find the spoon years later in a rat’s nest, along with a mummified rodent, which were on display. How does it connect with the book?

NP: It’s a cautionary tale on the one hand, and on the other hand, it’s also a parable. It was almost as though I could hear Gran’s voice saying, ‘here is a moment where nothing is as it seems’ and ‘the truth never stays buried forever.’ I knew that this was going to be the backdrop for The Mystery Guest, that there would be this fable underlying everything, where the past and the present merge. There’s a mystery to be solved that could only be dredged up through an understanding of something that Molly experienced in her childhood.

KH: There are so many new characters in The Mystery Guest, so many new suspects. Did you have a big outline?

NP: I did. That is one of the challenges of writing a series when you didn’t know you were writing a series. You have the gift of some of these characters that are well established, but you need to find room to move. The first book was a mystery on the one hand, but a feel-good fiction of growth – a journey through the spirit – on the other. In this novel, the answer to how I could find more narrative terrain was mystery on the front half, and then the trope of that secret in an old house melding the past and the present. I feel like the past story was really about finding a way to write a fairy tale for adults.

KH: I was a little sad to see Juan Manuel was away visiting his family and the potential for romance was not there. Why?

NP: [laughs] Because Molly has to grow. She had to go on a new journey, and with Juan around that would’ve been very challenging, because she would’ve had so much help from him. Now it is entirely possible there may be more books in the future, and I assure you there will be more romance in that case.

KH: Are you a fast writer?

NP: People always ask me ‘how long did it take you to write The Maid?’ I have two answers. One is 20 years and six months, and the other answer is six months. Through the generosity of my authors, who have allowed me to work with them on their stories for years, that’s how I learned. It was the best master class in writing I could have ever had. So, yes, I wrote it in six months, but my goodness, did it take me an awfully long time to learn the trade.

KH: How many pages are you into Molly the maid No. 3?

NP: I’m getting there.

KH: Do you have 100 pages?

NP: Not even a hundred. I had started The Mystery Guest thinking about what it would be, but there was no way I was going to release that from my grasp until I thought I could honour the character. So, what I have now for perhaps a future book, it’s just so early. Readers will see it if it turns out. 

KH: Can you give us a cryptic clue about it?

NP: I could say that I think there’s a lot of Gran’s story that has not been mined, and that’s another source of true mystery. Not the whodunnit kind, but the mystery that is essential to these characters and Molly’s understanding of who she is in the world. And that’s where the third book will lie. 

KH: How is The Maid movie going? Was it on hold because of the writer’s and actor’s strikes, which are now over?

NP: That’s exactly what happened and now things are moving again. I am excited about the next steps. I know that the producers are very much relieved that we can move forward. There is a script written. That is ready to go.

KH: Have you met Florence Pugh, who will play Molly?

NP: I would love to, but I have not met her. We’re still a ways off. There’s more casting to be done.