Bless the Bride

Rhys Bowen’s (yes, it’s that Rhys Bowen) latest Molly Murphy mystery, Bless the Bride (2011), takes a load off my mind.

I haven’t read the entire Molly Murphy series, but I’ve kept up enough over the years to know what’s going on, and I’ve been concerned about Molly’s plan to turn into a docile and non-mystery-solving wife when she marries her police captain, Daniel. In this book, she confronts the problem head on when she goes to stay with his mother (they’re supposed to be sewing Molly’s wedding dress, but the future mother-in-law quickly realizes Molly’s no seamstress) and, not surprisingly, leaps at the first opportunity to race back to Greenwich Village and her detective business.

Molly’s case takes her to a part of the city she knows nothing about: Chinatown. A wealthy Chinese businessman, Lee Sing Tai, engages Molly to find some lost property — which turns out to be a young woman. Molly spends time at the various mission houses near the area and also learns a bit about Chinese culture, from food and clothing to the treatment of women, and a bit more about how Americans, both the government and the people, treat the Chinese (Molly’s Irish background gives her a reason not to be aware of this yet, but to be sensitive to it when she sees it).

While she’s investigating, she’s also hiding that from Daniel, sneaking in to see the renovations to her (soon to be their) house, and attending a party thrown on her behalf by her bohemian neighbors. How will she ever learn to balance her domestic and investigative sides? You’ll have to read Bless the Bride to find out.

Book #8 in the Strong Heroine Reading Challenge