When Molly Murphy accidentally killed the son of the local landowner when he tried to rape her, she knew the courts would never side with a poor Irish girl over a rich Englishman, so she fled to Liverpool, hoping to gain passage aboard a boat to New York before the police caught up with her. In Liverpool, she meets Kathleen O’Connor, whose brother was executed for murder when a landowner’s agent was accidentally killed during a protest against evicting a neighbor, and whose husband, Seamus, was forced to flee to America after organizing a strike. Now Seamus has sent money for passage for Kathleen and her two children, but Kathleen has consumption, and won’t be allowed aboard the boat.
So the two women come up with a plan. Kathleen will give Molly her ticket and Molly can use her name to get to New York, as long as Molly will take care of her two children, and see them delivered to their father. Once the passage is over, however, Molly and the children are delayed overnight on Ellis Island, and a man who had been seen harassing Molly during the passage is killed. With herself and Michael, a young man she befriended during passage, as the police’s chief suspects, Molly sets out to find the killer on her own. Her chief ally and antagonist both is Daniel Sullivan, a young Irish-American police captain who may not be quite as law abiding as he seems.
The tone and plot of Murphy’s Law is as different from that of Her Royal Spyness, the only other Rhys Bowen I’ve read, as can be. While HRS was fun upper class 1930s fluff, ML is a darker look at the life of Irish immigrants in turn of the century New York City -both the passage and lifestyle. The living conditions aboard the boat for Molly and the children aren’t pretty, and neither are the Irish tenements they find themselves living in in New York City. In addition, Molly’s search for employment, not to mention the threats a woman alone in 1900 faces, aren’t white washed. The mystery, while important, isn’t the focus of the book, and is almost window dressing for the world of 1900 Irish New York City, though it’s final resolution is very tied to the politics and realities of the time. I like the aspect of Molly being guilty of one crime while trying to keep it secret as she proves herself innocent of another, but I can’t help but think the resolution of her deception about her identity was a little too tidy. Then again, I doubt anyone involved had never bent the rules before. I’m definitely interested in seeing how other books in the series turn out.
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