Review: Silent as the Grave by Rhys Bowen & Clare Broyles

Silent as the Grave (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #21)

by Rhys Bowen & Clare Broyles

Release Date: March 11, 2025

2025 Minotaur 

Ebook ARC; 336 Pages

ISBN: 978-1250890818

ASIN: B0D1P9HP38

Audiobook: B0DN8N9C8N

Genre: Fiction / Historical / Mystery

Source: Review copy from publisher

 

4 / 5 Stars

 

Summary

With a newborn and two children, Molly Murphy Sullivan is tackling motherhood. Her dear friend and writer, Ryan O’Hara, is shooting a movie, one of the first to involve a real plot and actors. When one of the actresses is fired, Molly’s adopted daughter, Bridie, is called to replace her in the scene. Turns out she’s a natural and is asked to star in the rest of the film. 

The movie industry is still experimenting with ways to get the best shot. But soon, their special effects start to malfunction. After a few mishaps where no one is hurt, the special effects turn deadly. With rumors of a feud between studios, Molly believes these malfunctions are sabotage. 

 

My Thoughts

Silent as the Grave combined factual information on the early movie industry in New York with a mystery, and this worked very well. Fresh off reading the non-ficton book Daughter of Daring, a book about one of the first stuntwomen in Hollywood, I was thrilled to read more about the early movie days, this time on the opposite side of the US. There was a lot of discussion on women’s roles in the industry as well as themes involving money, technology, theft, secrecy, loyalty, and friendship.

Being the 21st book in the series, character development for Molly is not necessarily needed, but I did enjoy reading about her struggles with a daughter who is a bit difficult and demanding. When I say I enjoyed it, I mean I completely sympathized with her as I have a daughter who was like that as an infant so I completely understood when she was frazzled. What I particularly enjoyed was the development of her adopted daughter Bridie as she is now 14 years old and starting to really come into her own.  I love how she changes her mind about things every two minutes as this really reflects the young girl she is, trying to act grown-up one  minute, but behaving immaturely the next. I also loved the inclusion of historical figures Mary Pickford at the beginning of her career and Thomas Edison, who was known to be quite difficult to work with and was one of the reasons why so many directors left NY for Hollywood.

The plot includes a lot of information about the early days of the film industry, something that I enjoyed tremendously, but I did find the overall mystery to be somewhat predictable even if I enjoyed it. The themes of friendship, loyalty, family, and trust as well as the beginnings of a monopoly on a fledgling movie industry added depth to the story. However, the overall pacing to the story was still somewhat slow and did get bogged down in details at times, sometimes to the point where I wondered where the author was going with the information.  

Verdict

Silent as the Grave was an interesting and entertaining entry into this long-running series. While the pacing was a bit slower than usual, the early days of the movie industry and its stars was something a bit different than the usual story and I enjoyed it quite a bit.  There were lots of twists and turns, although if you are familiar with the books you may be able to pick them out, but the author has this way of making scenes emotional so you don’t really care if you figured things out. And while this is a long-running series, you could jump into this book and understand what is happening without having read the previous books.