Genre: Mystery
Hardcover; Trade Paperback; Audio CD; Digital Book; Audiobook
ISBN #: 9781635112346; 9781635112313;9781520078267
Henery Press Publishing
236 Pages
$31.95; $15.95; $29.99; $2.99 Amazon
March 10, 2017
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Gethsemane Brown, African-American classical musician and expatriate to an Irish village, solved a string of murders, led a school orchestra to victory in a major competition, and got used to living with a snarky ghost. She can rest easy over the Christmas holiday. Right? Wrong. The ghost has disappeared, her landlord's about to sell her cottage to a hotel developer, and her brother-in-law is coming for a visit - with one day's notice. She scrambles to call her spectral roomie back from beyond and find a way to save the cottage from certain destruction. But real estate takes a backseat when her brother-in-law is accused of stealing a valuable antique. Gethsemane strikes a deal with a garda investigator to go undercover as a musician at a charity ball and snoop for evidence linking antiques to a forgery/theft ring in exchange for the investigator's help clearing her brother-in-law. At the party, she accidentally conjures the ghost of an eighteenth-century sea captain, then ends up the prime suspect in the party host's murder. With the captain's help, she races to untangle a web of phony art and stolen antiques to exonerate herself and her brother-in-law. Then the killer targets her. Will she save herself and bring a thief and murderer to justice, or will her encore investigation become her swan song?
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Gethsemane Brown is a music teacher in Ireland, a fairly new life. She lives at Carraigfaire Cottage, once the home of a famous Irish composer, Eamon McCarthy. While Eamon's ghost once haunted the cottage, he has since disappeared. And Gethsemane wants him back - mainly because his descendant Billy, the current owner, is planning to sell the cottage to an American real estate developer named Hank Wayne who will destroy the heart of the cottage while turning it into a hotel. Because of this, she asks for help from the local priest in the form of borrowing a book to summon spirits, in the hope that it will bring Eamon back to get rid of Hank, who has a deathly fear of ghosts. But instead, it brings the spirit of a sea captain who needs her help.
To add to this her brother-in-law Jackson Applethwaite arrives looking to purchase a needlework collection for his museum. But when a small piece of the collection - now stolen - is found in the pocket of his overcoat, he is suspected of the crime. In order to clear his name, Gethsemane agrees to go undercover at a private function for Olivia McCarthy-Boyle, a serious art collector, as one of the musicians in order to find a bill of sale for the collection.
But while searching for the bill of sale, Gethsemane encounters a few slight problems...first, that the ghost she conjured up isn't that of Eamon, but a Colonial sea captain, and while she's still adjusting to it, she finds Mrs. McCarthy-Boyle's body in the bushes below the office balcony.
Now art fraud has escalated to what appears to be murder. At first it seems that Gethsemane is the guilty one, but luckily there was a witness to her whereabouts, yet Jackson's still not off the hook, and suddenly her simple task seems to have become much more complicated. Only her wits and hopefully, the help of Captain Lochlan, will help her find the truth before Jackson isn't able to return home to Virginia at all but remain in Ireland, and in a lot more cloistered area than the remote village where she lives...
For the most part, I enjoyed this book. I thought the plot was well thought out and the writing was very good. What bothered me though is that I had a hard time believing a priest would actually give anyone a book on summoning spirits - especially knowing why she wanted it. I seriously doubt if you went to a priest and asked him for a book so you could summon 'just one' ghost that he would willingly give you a book (if there was one in his possession). It's not the sort of thing they do.
Secondly, Gethsemane is just a tad arrogant - it was apparent in the first book, but I hoped it had been toned down a bit for this one. However, she believes herself such a good detective that she actually compares herself to Poirot - yes, Christie's Poirot. That's arrogance. Don't get me wrong, I like strong female characters, but when she withholds potential information so that she can investigate, and in a country she's still unfamiliar with? It doesn't ring true.
Aside from these things, the ending was satisfactory, and while I enjoyed the first book more, I will probably read the next in the series.
https://www.amazon.com/Death-Minor-Gethsemane-Brown-Mystery/dp/1635112311/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2251391262
More on Alexia Gordon's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/g/alexia-gordon/
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