{"id":507,"date":"2012-04-04T11:27:13","date_gmt":"2012-04-04T17:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=507"},"modified":"2012-04-04T11:59:15","modified_gmt":"2012-04-04T17:59:15","slug":"rhys-bowen-hush-now-don%e2%80%99t-you-cry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/rhys-bowen-hush-now-don%e2%80%99t-you-cry\/","title":{"rendered":"Rhys Bowen: Hush Now, Don\u2019t You Cry"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For pure entertainment value, Rhys Bowen simply cannot be beat.\u00a0 Whether it\u2019s her light and funny Lady Georgie mysteries set in the 30\u2019s, or her \u201cflagship\u201d series featuring Molly Murphy, her skill as a storyteller is almost unmatched.\u00a0 I\u2019d compare her to such different authors as Harlan Coben or Michael Connelly, in that once you pick up a Rhys Bowen book, if you\u2019re very lucky, you won\u2019t have to look up until you\u2019re finished with it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Molly, for the uninitiated, is an Irish immigrant who came through Ellis Island in the first book, which was set in 1900.\u00a0 Now ten books into the series, Molly has had her own private detective agency (though the fate of her agency is up in the air), and she has at last married her long time suitor, New York City police detective Daniel Sullivan (see the last book, Bless the Bride<\/em>).\u00a0 Daniel has asked Molly, now that they are married, to settle down and give up her private detective agency.\u00a0 So far his plan isn\u2019t working out too well.<\/p>\n

Molly defines the word inquisitive so she\u2019s a natural detective, one who has worked with Daniel in the past on other cases.\u00a0 The books have taken Molly all over New York \u2013 working undercover in a shirtwaist factory, to Chinatown, as an assistant to Harry Houdini, and many other places.\u00a0 Her best friends, a gay couple who live across the street, Gus and Sid (they are female), bear a striking resemblance to Nancy Drew\u2019s buddies Bess and George.\u00a0 And Molly is\u00a0very much a grown up Nancy Drew, with far more shadings, naturally.<\/p>\n

In this outing Bowen takes the tropes of both the haunted house book and the locked room mystery to create a very uncomfortable honeymoon atmosphere for the newlywed Sullivans.\u00a0 Because their honeymoon had gotten derailed they have taken up the seemingly generous offer of the powerful New York City Alderman, Brian Hanna, to stay in the guest cottage on his Newport estate.\u00a0 While the Sullivans are staying in the guest cottage \u2013 one which very much reminds Molly of the cottages of her native Ireland \u2013 the rest of the Alderman\u2019s family, squabbles and all, have appeared in the main house.<\/p>\n

When Molly and Daniel arrive she thinks she seems a ghostly face in one of the main house windows, an idea Daniel scoffs at.\u00a0 As their honeymoon progresses, the Alderman, not unsurprisingly, turns up dead, and Daniel develops a very serious case of pneumonia.\u00a0 While I knew in my heart that Bowen had probably not painstakingly created the vivid character of Daniel over the course of ten books only to kill him off, she is so good at what she does that I was literally on the edge of my seat, worried about the outcome of Daniel\u2019s illness.\u00a0 I\u2019ll just say anxious tears were shed.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, of course, this gives Molly free reign to investigate the mysteries of both the ghostly face in the window and the Alderman\u2019s death.\u00a0 Hanna\u2019s family is somewhat hostile to the Sullivans and fairly dysfunctional.\u00a0 The housekeeper also seems to be hiding something, though she\u2019s sometimes friendly, she\u2019s also sometimes standoffish.<\/p>\n

Bowen is truly a classic mystery writer in that the story she has created is actually mysterious.\u00a0 There are several threads, many puzzling ones, and there are fair clues, red herrings and a fairly laid out solution to the crime.\u00a0 She\u2019s also able to create vivid characters, not just the ones of Molly and Daniel, but all of the Hanna family, Daniel\u2019s mother, and Gus and Sid, are completely realized.\u00a0 Last time Ms. Bowen visited Aunt Agatha\u2019s\u00a0 I mentioned that I was sad that I had raced through the book so quickly \u2013 with a disgusted look, she mentioned how many months it had taken her to write it.\u00a0 Well, so sorry, Ms. Bowen, but when you\u2019re this good at what you do, readers are going to inhale your stories, just like I do.\u00a0 As I\u2019ve said to many a customer, happy reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For pure entertainment value, Rhys Bowen simply cannot be beat.\u00a0 Whether it\u2019s her light and funny Lady Georgie mysteries set in the 30\u2019s, or her \u201cflagship\u201d series featuring Molly Murphy, her skill as a storyteller is almost unmatched.\u00a0 I\u2019d compare her to such different authors as Harlan Coben or Michael Connelly, in that once you … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":524,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions\/524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}