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A review by wordsofclover
For the Love of Mike by Rhys Bowen
4.0
Narrated by Lara Hutchinson.
This is the third book in the Molly Murphy Mystery series and follows Molly, a young Irish woman in New York, as she takes on some new commissions in her new job as a PI. This time around Molly goes undercover at a garment factory to find a spy stealing designs but ends up getting involved in the worker's fight for better conditions. At the same time, Molly is also looking for the daughter of a wealthy man who ran away from Ireland with an employee of her father's estate, and the two jobs may be connected.
I really enjoyed this installment of Molly's journey. I feel like a lot happened in this one and we not only got some adventures with Molly that saw her get in all sorts of trouble as usual including being mistaken for a prostitute and a violent protester on two different occasions but also a look into what life was life for the poor immigrants in New York forced to take any measly job they could so survive in the land of the free. I feel this book highlighted more so than the other books, the problems Molly could have being a female PI in a time when it was strange for a woman to be so independent. Like I mentioned above, at one point while she is spying on someone she has been employed to follow, she is arrested by policemen for simply being a woman alone and out after dark. She also, again, has several men tell her how stupid her dreams are and how she should give up the dangerous work of being a PI because as a woman, it would be impossible for her to be successful.
I also enjoyed the entrance of a male character that finally was able to divert Molly's attentions from police captain Daniel O' Sullivan. Jakob was extremely cute, and though not enamoured by Molly's PI job wasn't as forceful about it as Daniel. It's obvious Molly will end up with Daniel at some stage but I'm glad to see she's not waiting around like a lost puppy. With Jakob, we also get to see the difficulties of religious differences and cultural differences with Jakob being from a strict Yiddish background and the problems he and Molly may face because of this.
This book kept me interested and entertained though as usual a lot of Molly's success comes from a lot of a luck and some bad decisions that lead to surprising discoveries rather than any real skill. I really like the narrator Lara Hutchinson who gives Molly a really unique voice and does other characters and accents really well (I just realised how much I love Hutchinson having started the next book in the series which has a new narrator and she's awful.)
This is the third book in the Molly Murphy Mystery series and follows Molly, a young Irish woman in New York, as she takes on some new commissions in her new job as a PI. This time around Molly goes undercover at a garment factory to find a spy stealing designs but ends up getting involved in the worker's fight for better conditions. At the same time, Molly is also looking for the daughter of a wealthy man who ran away from Ireland with an employee of her father's estate, and the two jobs may be connected.
I really enjoyed this installment of Molly's journey. I feel like a lot happened in this one and we not only got some adventures with Molly that saw her get in all sorts of trouble as usual including being mistaken for a prostitute and a violent protester on two different occasions but also a look into what life was life for the poor immigrants in New York forced to take any measly job they could so survive in the land of the free. I feel this book highlighted more so than the other books, the problems Molly could have being a female PI in a time when it was strange for a woman to be so independent. Like I mentioned above, at one point while she is spying on someone she has been employed to follow, she is arrested by policemen for simply being a woman alone and out after dark. She also, again, has several men tell her how stupid her dreams are and how she should give up the dangerous work of being a PI because as a woman, it would be impossible for her to be successful.
I also enjoyed the entrance of a male character that finally was able to divert Molly's attentions from police captain Daniel O' Sullivan. Jakob was extremely cute, and though not enamoured by Molly's PI job wasn't as forceful about it as Daniel. It's obvious Molly will end up with Daniel at some stage but I'm glad to see she's not waiting around like a lost puppy. With Jakob, we also get to see the difficulties of religious differences and cultural differences with Jakob being from a strict Yiddish background and the problems he and Molly may face because of this.
This book kept me interested and entertained though as usual a lot of Molly's success comes from a lot of a luck and some bad decisions that lead to surprising discoveries rather than any real skill. I really like the narrator Lara Hutchinson who gives Molly a really unique voice and does other characters and accents really well (I just realised how much I love Hutchinson having started the next book in the series which has a new narrator and she's awful.)