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In Like Flynn

by Rhys Bowen

In Like Flynn is a Molly Murphy novel by Rhys Bowen, with the title a takeoff from a saying about Errol Flynn, a rather promiscuous movie idol of the last century. In this case, it's about a wealthy politician with identical tendencies. The writing for In Like Flynn seems rather stilted at first, but as you read further into the book, Ms. Bowen's style becomes smoother – or perhaps we're simply getting adjusted to the way a young woman writes in the very early twentieth century! At any rate, Molly Murphy is a fine heroine, full of vim and vinegar as they say, and plunging headfirst into situations no proper female would attempt in those days. Rhy Bowen has done a marvelous job of conveying the atmosphere of an early New York City as well as the plush magnificence of mansions lining the Hudson River at that time.

Escaping the threat of the typhoid epidemic in Manhattan, Molly Murphy takes on an assignment given to her by her friend, Captain Daniel Sullivan, a police chief in New York. The job is to prove the fraudulence of two spiritualist sisters who have collected quite a following among the rich. The Sorensen Sisters, as they're known, are the guests of a wealthy politician, Senator Barney Flynn, residing in a Hudson Riverside mansion named Adair. Molly is to impersonate an Irish cousin of his, recently emigrating to the United States.

Senator Flynn's wife, Theresa, is still mourning the kidnapping and loss of her young son five years previously. Theresa hopes that the sisters will be able to contact the two-year-old Brendan. Evidently the kidnapper was killed by an overzealous Federal Agent before he could tell where the child was buried alive, and the boy was never found.

When Molly is accosted by a former employee of the Flynn estate and asked to find the actual kidnapper, saying that the man who was shot was an innocent pawn, Molly has two commitments to fulfill, and she does her best to accomplish both, in spite of the fact that her policeman friend warns her not to interfere in the older case.

In Like Flynn is a marvelous historical murder mystery, totally different from Rhys Bowen's other mystery series with its milder, but no less captivating protagonist in Wales. Her descriptions of places and people in the New York City of 1902 is a compelling indication of her avid research. I had no idea, for instance, that what are commonly called psychologists and psychiatrists today were then known as alienists!
And although the protagonist here is a female, every reader will enjoy Molly as much as they obviously do with fictional characters like Kate Fansler or Kinsey Millhone, et al.

Alan Paul Curtis

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