Haunted Harmony Mysteries: Murder in G Major

Having lost her way as a musician, American Gethsemane Brown has just arrived in Dunmullagh, Ireland to begin work as a music teacher at St. Brendan's School, the goal to bring the ragtag group of students into an award winning chorus. She is initially enthralled to learn from her landlord Billy that the house that has been arranged as her accommodations belonged to his uncle, famed songwriter/musician Eamon McCarthy, one of her Irish musical idols. She is less enthralled in learning the dirty local secret that he was implicated in a murder suicide five years ago, the story being that he killed who was purported to be the love of his life, Orla O'Dell, by pushing her off a cliff near the house, before he killed himself by ingesting poison. After mysteriously hearing the same four note tune played on the piano in the house, she is further dismayed to learn that the house is being haunted by Eamon's ghost, she the first person ever not only to understand that the musical idiom he is playing are the notes D-E-A-D, but to see him. As such, he believes that the reason is that she was meant to help him not only clear his name in he asserting to her that he didn't kill either Orla or himself, but finding who actually killed them will allow him finally to pass over to be reunited with Orla for eternity. Gethsemane reluctantly thus becomes an amateur sleuth. While Eamon becomes her silent partner both for the investigation and for her work conducting the students, Gethsemane has to decide who she can trust if a killer is still in their midst. Two of those trusted people are Inspector O'Reilly, who she had to convince to reopen the investigation based on recent evidence come to light and recent goings-on at the house, and her colleague Griff, the expat calculus teacher, the two men who seemingly have their romantic sights set on her.—Huggo