Who is Maud Dixon?

by Alexandra Andrews

Who is Maud Dixon by Alexandra Andrews 

Now that Memorial Day 2021 has passed and the temperatures are already making it feel like August in early June, it’s safe to say we’ve unofficially begun summer.  And that brings to mind “summer reading,” a phrase that has always made my eyes roll to the back of my head then out both my ears. 

I therefore say “mea culpa, mea maxima culpa” and urge you to forget what i said and get to your local bookstore/libes to get what I predict will be the summer read of 2021: “Who is Maud Dixon?” by Alexandra Andrews.

Funny thing is, it’s a mystery—a genre i don’t even particularly like. But now that i’ve entered my new phase in my life (see also: retirement), all bets are off.

The story starts innocently enough. Florence Darrow is an editorial assistant in New York

who can’t catch a break. Everybody in her office seems smarter and better connected than she is and her creepy male boss crushes on her in pursuit of a one-night stand. Then she’s fired

when she spills the beans on him.

Woe is she. Until. Until.

A rival publishing house gets word that their

best-selling writer, a certain “Maud Dixon” needs an live-in go-fer/personal assistant to attend to her every whim at her farm just outside Hudson, New York, as she writes her follow up novel. 

Only catch is, the candidate has to keep mum about who the writer is, as “Maud Dixon” is only a pseudonym for the writer, whose real name is Helen Wilcox.

Florence applies for the job and gets it, meets Helen, and they get along like a house on fire. Helen is very soignee and Florence very impressionable.  So impressionable, Florence agrees to accompany Helen to Morocco to do some “research”for the upcoming novel.

What follows is a story of masquerades, assumed identities, a bit of kif-smoking, a lovely homage to Morocco, and a finale that will have you panting like you’re watching a great Hitchcock film while simultaneously reading a Patricia Highsmith novel. 

To tell you any more would be murder (hint, hint). So just remember the title Who is Maud Dixon?” After you finish, you’ll not only know. You’ll also want to know where this Alexandra Andrews has been all your life. 

Happy summer reading, folks.