The Luck of the Irish

Murphy’s Law [by] Rhys Bowen

[New York] St. Martin’s Paperbacks [2001]

0-312-98497-9; $7.99

Molly Murphy’s mother told her her mouth would get her into trouble, but no one had any idea how much Molly could get herself into trouble until Justin Hartley lay dead on her kitchen floor, and Molly was running for her life.  Of course, she was only defending her honor, but who would see it that way, when it was an English landowner’s son she had killed, and her living in one of the peasant’s cottages on his father’s land?

Molly had taken herself to Belfast, with hopes for a passage to England, where she could lose herself in a big city.  She narrowly escapes being caught by the police, when a woman snatches her away from them, under the pretense that Molly is her sister.  The woman is Kathleen O’Connor, a woman who plans to meet her husband in New York, leaving tomorrow on the big ship in the harbor, the Majestic, with her two children, Seamus and Bridie.

Only Kathleen will not be able to go – her required physical sealed her fate:  she has T.B., and will be turned back.  But, if Molly sails in her stead, she can take the children to their father, barred from returning to Ireland because of his union activities.  Molly sets out with the two children for America.

The first hurdle to be overcome is that they are steerage passengers, deep in the bowels of the ship; unable to go on deck even to wave to the woman they are leaving behind.  They endure the crowding, the seasickness, and the rest of the lot of steerage passengers.  Molly is accosted by a man named O’Malley, who proves to be trouble, especially when it looks like he might be able to unmask her as a fraud, and another young man from the childhood hometown of Kathleen O’Connor, Michael Larkin.

Arriving at Ellis Island, they have to wait, listening to speeches from the Mayor of New York and others dedicating the new immigration building, while non-English-speakers, look around, not understanding.

This makes them too late to be processed through and they have to stay on Ellis Island, in the new dorms, for the night. Two things mark that night as memorable.  Bridie sleepwalks away from Molly, who runs to find her, and gets yelled at by a man in a guard’s uniform.  Later, all are rousted out of bed because someone has been murdered:  the man called O’Malley.  Molly can only feel relief that he can’t betray her.  She answers the policeman’s questions, and is allowed to go back to bed, but the next day she is questioned by Captain Daniel Sullivan, who is in charge of the investigation.  She tells him about the guard, and the police begin to look for him.  But Molly doesn’t see him in the lineup.

Finally, she is let go, and she and the children meet with Kathleen’s husband, who is shocked to find that Kathleen couldn’t come.  Then they all walk home to the East Side.  The children get an eyeful of the marvels of New York:  skyscrapers, electric streetcars and bright lights.  But the welcome at the crowded place where Seamus O’Connor lives with his brother and sister-in-law and their family is not a particularly warm one, and Molly realizes that it’s time she should be moving on.

The next day she walks back down to the waterfront park where she’d hoped to meet her friend from the boot, Michael, but he doesn’t come.  Discouraged, she goes back to the East Side, where policemen wait to take her down to the station.  There she discovers that Kathleen’s brother was involved with Michael’s father in the death of an English agent – the story Kathleen had told her while they waited the long night before the ship sailed, and that O’Malley may have bee the person who betrayed them to the authorities.  Michael has been taken by the N.Y.P.D. as a suspect in O’Malley’s death.  Molly promises to get him freed.

She both needs to find leads to absolve Michael and to find a job for herself, so she sets off the next day to do just that.  She finds a lead on the guard she saw at Ellis Island, but very nearly gets herself a position in a brothel.  Returning to the place she’s learned to call home, where the children and their father are living, she ends up having to fight Kathleen’s husband’s brother off, and getting blamed by his wife for leading him on.  She runs away. Spending the night in the police shelter, and then continuing her sleuthing the next day, she finds Seamus, and promises him to help with the children, and explains why she’s no longer there.  He gives her some money, so she can find lodging at a women’s hostel.  Then she finds the photographer who took pictures at Ellis Island, hoping that she might find a clue.  But the old Jew is dead, and Captain Sullivan is, again, investigating.

A visit to a job agency gets her a temporary position at the house of a man she’d found on one of the photographs taken by the dead Jewish photographer.  At the house, she finds the murderer, almost loses her life, and finds a great love.  A very satisfying ending to a lovely tale of a brave and resilient young woman, who became a pretty good sleuth by using her head at the beginning of the 20^th Century.  This is the first book in the Molly Murphy series, and I expect many more exciting adventures in Molly’s life.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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The book is mine.