Book Review: In Like Flynn

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

In Like Flynn     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Rhys Bowen
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Historical   Woman Main Character
Series: Molly Murphy # 4
St. Martin’s, March 2005, $23.95, 336 pp.

In 1902, while New York City is in the middle of a typhoid epidemic, Irish immigrant Molly Murphy becomes a private eye; that is why police Captain Daniel Sullivan asks her to work undercover posing as Senator Flynn’s cousin from Ireland while the family of the representative hosts the Sorenson Sisters who are mediums. Flynn’s wife Theresa wants to contact her son who was kidnapped five years ago and the Sorenson Sisters have a reputation for contacting spirits.

Needing the money, Molly agrees to take the assignment to prove the sisters are frauds. She also meets the woman who was briefly considered a suspect in the kidnapping and she wants Molly to find evidence that will prove she had nothing to do with the crime even though she cared about the suspect, the chauffeur Bertie Morrel. From the time she gets settled in Adora, the senator’s mansion, Molly feels a sense of evil pervades the place. When Theresa’s nurse is killed by falling off a cliff, she almost thinks it isn’t an accident. While investigating the Sorenson Sisters, she also probes the kidnapping which makes someone very nervous, a person who has killed before and isn’t afraid to murder again anyone who gets in the perpetrator’s way.

The more one reads about Molly Murphy, the more one realizes how creative and refreshing the series as a whole is. Rhys Bowen is the type of storyteller one rarely finds, who can create the perfect ambience, tell a good story and construct a who-done-it that is almost impossible to solve. IN LIKE FLYNN is a fantastic historical mystery that captures what it was like at the beginning of the twentieth century in New York

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner