“Murder in G Major” is the first book in the Gethsemane Brown Mystery series by Alexia Gordon. It is her first novel and it is an auspicious debut.

Alexia Gordon, like her protagonist Gethsemane Brown, seems to be an individual driven to achieve.  Alexia attended the Southern Methodist University’s Writer’s Path program in Dallas, TX after she complete her medical degree and residency in family medicine.  Now she practices medicine in El Paso, Texas and writes this series.

As the story opens Gethsemane Brown has just suffered a setback in her career.  She had been promised the assistant conductor position with the Cork Philharmonic in Ireland, only to have it yanked away at the last minute by the music director’s fiance.  To make matters worse, she has lost her luggage and her money has been stolen.  She settles for a position at St. Brennan’s school for boys with a mission to turn a rowdy group of school boys into an award winning orchestra.  A benefit of the job is she is allowed to stay in the cliffside cottage of a famous composer, Eamon McCarthy, who was accused of killing his poet wife and then himself.

Eamon haunts the home and begs Gethsemane to find his wife’s real killer so that he can rest in peace.

I normally am not a fan of paranormal books.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a poet and philosopher, stated that if a writer could infuse a “human interest and a semblance of truth” into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgment concerning the implausibility of the narrative. Alexia Gordon has done just that – she has succeeded in my suspension of disbelief in this paranormal story.  I bought the entire story and loved it.

I also loved Gethsemane’s drive to succeed.  She states, “Quitting’s not who I am.  It’s not in my DNA.  My father’s father was a brilliant cellist who couldn’t land a gig with a professional orchestra because he was black and it was the nineteen-twenties.  He didn’t quit the cello and go back to tailoring, he started his own orchestra.  My mother’s parents were sharecroppers.  When she was born the plantation owner’s wife congratulated Grandma on the ‘birth of another little cotton picker.’ Everyone told Mother poor, black country girls don’t get to be doctors, so she became a doctor….Succeeding despite everything being against you, beating the odds is a family tradition.”

Overall I enjoyed everything about this book: the setting, the characters, the voice, the plot. I strongly recommend it.

Five stars out of five.

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In accordance with the FTC guidelines for reviewers, I would like to clarify that this book was provided to me by the publisher free of charge.  I am not compensated by the author or publisher for my review.  All they expect is an honest review of the work.