Book Talk: Hush Now, Don't You Cry

Title: Hush Now, Don't You Cry

Author: Rhys Bowen

Genre: Mystery > Historical and Cozy

Length: 320 pages

My Rating: 5 – Meh, take it or leave it

From Goodreads.com: In the latest in Rhys Bowen's award-winning historical series, Molly Murphy is supposed to give up sleuthing now that she’s married, but the murder of an alderman puts her on the trail of a killer.

Molly Murphy, now Molly Sullivan, and her husband Daniel, a captain in the New York Police department, have been invited to spend their honeymoon on the Newport, RI, estate of Alderman Brian Hannan in the spring of 1904. Molly doesn’t entirely trust the offer. Hannan—an ambitious man—has his eye on a senate seat and intentions of taking Tammany Hall to get it. When Hannan is found dead at the base of the cliffs that overlook the Atlantic, Molly’s suspicions are quickly justified, and as much as she wants to keep her promise to Daniel that she won’t do any more sleuthing now, there isn’t much she can do once the chase is on. Rhys Bowen’s brilliant wit and charm are on full display in Hush Now, Don’t You Cry, another outstanding addition to her Agatha and Anthony award-winning historical series.

My Thoughts:

I picked this up at the library this week because I've been craving a mystery, was feeling like The Time In Between was dragging (I still plan to finish it, though!), and I needed a change of pace. I'm a big wuss when it comes to mystery/crime. My room is in the very back of our house, down a long, dark hallway, and I often get spooked by suspense in the non-suspense genre books I read. So when I saw on the jacket that this is considered a "cozy" mystery, I thought it might be just what I was looking for.

This is the 11th book in the Molly Murphy Mystery series, but the first one for me. I knew nothing about Molly or her husband, Daniel, going into the book, and I do not think this hindered the readability of this book at all. It was an easy, quick read, and the mystery/suspense was very mild.

I liked Molly okay as a heroine. She was bright and observant, and I never found her annoying or grating on my nerves. The men in the novel I could do without, but I think it would be unfair to judge the book by the men as it is set in the early 1900s when men, and society, were much less accepting of a woman participating in what was considered male roles. The Hannan family was completely unlikeable, and their numbers made it difficult to keep them all straight. I thought Miss Gallinger was a hoot and wish she had been a part of the novel much sooner.

SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT!

I can't really say that I liked this book, but I was interested to see who the killer was. And the reading was so easy and fast that I made the choice not to skim the book. The book didn't really pick up until about page 200, at which point it really went quickly. I thought the ending was a joke. The killer was confronted with no evidence and immediately confessed. The fact that he was able to grab Kathleen was absurd — at that point there would have been many adults stepping in front of and towards her. There is no way that she would have been that exposed in real life. And, then, him being pushed off the cliff to his death tied everything up way too neatly. The real kicker: all this happened in about two pages of the last ten pages of the book. At this point it all felt very contrived and anti-climactic. I very much doubt I will try another Molly Murphy Mystery.