"fantastic historical mystery"

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

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted March 5, 2005

Summary

Fledgling private investigator Molly Murphy's latest assignment gives her the opportunity to escape the typhoid epidemic sweeping across New York City in the summer of 1902 for the lush Hudson River Valley. And it comes from an unlikely source-Captain Daniel Sullivan, a New York City police detective and erstwhile beau of Molly's. She has vowed to keep him at arm's length until he can rid himself of his socialite fiancée, but she can't pass up the chance to take advantage of his offer of a real detective job.

Daniel hires Molly to go undercover inside the country household of Senator Barney Flynn, in Peekskill, New York. Flynn's wife, Theresa, has become the latest devotee of a pair of spiritualists known as the Sorensen Sisters. The frail Theresa is desperate to use the sisters' alleged abilities to hold a séance to contact her infant son, who was kidnapped five years ago and never found; the accused kidnapper was killed before he could tell police where the boy was being held. But the police are sure the women are frauds.

When Molly allows herself to be distracted from the Sorensen Sisters and the members of the Flynn household by the unsolved kidnapping, it is a race against time to find out what's really going on before it's too late.

In Like Flynn is the latest captivating installment in a series which has garnered an impressive array of awards and nominations in just three books: Rhys Bowen's Molly Murphy mysteries have won the Agatha Award, the Anthony Award, the Bruce Alexander Historical Award, and the Herodotus Award, and have been shortlisted for the Agatha Award, the Macavity Award, and the Mary Higgins Clark Award.