Murphy's Law

"I couldn’t believe my luck," says Molly Murphy in Murphy's Law, a mystery novel from 2001 by Rhys Bowen, who has since written many more books about her Irish heroine. It is indeed the luck of the Irish that carries her through an adventure, although the cynical might say it's simply coincidences, and huge ones at that.

Molly has killed a man who tried to rape her, and knows she will hang because he was a rich man. She goes on the lam, and as luck would have it, is rescued by a woman with two children who is about to board a ship for America. She's dying of tuberculosis, and knows she will be sent back, so she asks Molly to impersonate her and take the children with her.

That's miracle number one. Bowen does a nice job of describing what it's like in steerage on a cross-Atlantic voyage, conjuring up what it must have smelled like. A man accosts Molly, knowing she's not who she says she is, but he ends up murdered on Ellis Island. Molly was seen slapping him, so she is questioned by Captain Daniel Sullivan of the NYPD. What do you know, Molly kind of fancies him.

Molly ends up trying to find the killer herself, so we are squarely in the amateur sleuth genre, with a person who can't keep her nose out of things. She wanders around lower Manhattan (by the mention of place names I knew how far she had walked) and ends up suspecting an alderman, who is a big shot in Tammany Hall. She goes looking for a job as a governess when she hears about a need for a parlor maid at this man's house, and gets the job. Miracle number two.

I won't spoil miracle number three, but plucky Molly survives for at least a few more books. This is the kind of cozy mystery that many people read like potato chips. There is no violence on the page, only off, and Molly is a good girl. Bowen describes the decrepitude of lower Manhattan at the turn of the 20th century, and even puts Molly in jeopardy at a brothel, but it's all chaste, and a child reading this might wonder what a brothel is.

Essentially, this is a pleasant way to pass the time without stretching your brain. But I have no further interest in any books of this series.