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OUNTAINS
USIC FESTIVAL
an Agusta McKee Mystery
Pocono Mountains, June, 1966
Augusta McKee, amateur sleuth, professor of music, and former opera singer, is invited to perform in the musical Carousel at the Pocono Playhouse in Northeastern Pennsylvania. With the encouragement of her husband, Cincinnati P.D. Homicide Detective Malcolm Mitchell, she accepts this chance to be on a stage again, in an area where she spent happy summers as a child experiencing the beauty of the mountains and the Delaware Water Gap.
Two nights after the show opens, a woman’s body is found in the theater’s parking lot. An old beau of Augusta’s, Evan Llewellyn, who plays the male lead in the show, is the prime—in fact, the only—suspect in the murder. Because the victim was from Cincinnati, Malcolm becomes involved in the case and joins Augusta in the Poconos.
Llewellyn’s past as the child of coal miners in the nearby Anthracite Region of Pennsylvania emerges as an essential element in the case. While searching for clues to the murder, Augusta and Malcolm learn of past and present destruction created by mining and witness firsthand the devastation caused by the Carbondale underground mine fire.
As the puzzle pieces of the case fall into place, Augusta finds herself in a harrowing, life-threatening confrontation with the killer—at a remote, long-abandoned coal mine.
After a lifetime as a musician—performer, teacher, musical theater director—Susan Moore Jordan wrote and published her first novel in 2013 at the age of seventy-five, and she hasn’t stopped since. Her first novel, How I Grew Up, was released in 2013. Two additional novels followed: Eli’s Heart in 2014 and You Are My Song in 2015, completing “The Carousel Trilogy.” Jamie’s Children, a sequel to You Are My Song, was released in 2016.
In 2017 Memories of Jake, the first book in "The Cameron Saga," was followed by Man with No Yesterdays. Set in the Vietnam War era, the books follow the impact of military service and its aftermath on brothers Andrew and Jake Cameron. Lindsey Cameron, Andrew's daughter, is featured in And This Shall Be for Music, released in 2022. In May 2018, Susan Jordan added another genre to her work when she released The Case of the Slain Soprano. In November of 2018 the second book in the "Augusta McKee Mysteries" was released: The Case of the Disappearing Director. More books followed: The Case of the Toxic Tenor, The Case of the Purloined Professor, The Case of the Chrysanthemum Murders, The Case of the Unearthed Evidence, The Case of the 'Carousel' Killer, and The Case of the Bogus Beatle.
Jordan attended the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati and moved to the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania in 1971 with her husband and three children. Beginning in 1984, Jordan directed some eighty local community and high school musical theater productions. She retired from directing in 2015 after over thirty years and wrote about her adventures in “More Fog, Please”: Thirty-One Years Directing Community and High School Musicals, released in November, 2015.
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All of her books are available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions. Paperback copies of Jordan’s books can be purchased locally at the Pocono Cinema and Community Center in East Stroudsburg whenever the theater is open.
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The Case of the Slain Soprano was named a finalist in the 2018 Wishing Shelf Independent Book Awards in the category Books for Adults (fiction). The book was also a semi-finalist in The Kindle Book Awards. Man with No Yesterdays was recognized by the Wishing Shelf Awards and Kindle Book Awards the following year.
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All of Jordan’s books are “music-centric” (in the words of one reviewer), and readers comment on the strength of the element of music included in her work. Jordan sees writing as another way to share the music she loves, which she considers “the most powerful force in the universe.”
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Articles by Susan Moore Jordan have appeared in Musical America and The Guardian, and on August 2, 2019, she appeared on Hour Three of “The Today Show” as a Super Senior.
