“Highland Gothic”: A Review of What Happened at the Abbey (The Strathbairn Trilogy, Book 1) by Isobel Blackthorn

 

(Next Chapter, 2025). ISBN: 979-8272238542

Five years ago, I was asked to review The Ghost of Villa Winter, the fourth book in a series written by the talented and prolific writer of thrillers, Isobel Blackthorn. I was deeply impressed by her ability to bring a locale to life, to make it an essential character in a well-crafted, page-turning mystery. Blackthorn does a great deal of research concerning the locales about which she writes (like Stephen King and Castle Rock, Maine), which draws the reader immediately and deeply into the story.

What Happened at the Abbey (the first of a trilogy), although the locale, characters, and time period are far different than those of The Ghost of Villa Winter, offers the same opportunity for reader immersion through palpable atmospheres and authenticity of Time and Place.

I am a fan (and writer) of thrillers, especially those with a Gothic setting and atmosphere, and the Scottish Highlands offer Blackthorn a perfect canvas and palette for her to paint an engaging, intriguing tale full of sharply drawn characters, deep/dark secrets, and high-stakes storylines in a formidable, memorable locale.

The heroine of the story, Ingrid Barker, is a single mother on the run in March 1890, seeking a fresh start as a housekeeper on a best-days-are-behind-it estate in a town from her youth. She is suitably complicated and vacillating, which fuels her arc as the center of the story. Her daughter, a precocious preteen with a doll who’s treated as an integral member of the family, is both motivator and complicator (if you’re a parent, you’ll understand).

The occupants of the house (permanent and temporary), both upstairs and down, are akin to the memorable stock characters one might find in Downton Abbey, The Fall of the House of Usher, Hound of the Baskervilles, The Master of Ballantrae, and a hundred (or thousand) other Gothic and mystery tales. This is not to say that this is a book you don’t need to read. It is anything but. If you love this genre, with all its powerful tropes, What Happened at the Abbey should be high on your list.

It is a challenge to review a thriller. Early on (many [many] years ago) in my work as a reviewer, I took my lumps by revealing too much about a book and getting scolded by the author.  Ever since, I have endeavored to raise interest while leaving the details for the reader to discover, a course I follow here.

Instead of ruining a deftly constructed mystery-box plot expertly unfolded, I’ll illuminate some of the techniques and choices used to impressive effect by the author. The first is that there are two first-person, present-tense voices trading the narrative back and forth without any indication of who is initially speaking when a change is made. This literary conceit threw me a little at first. The voices are those of the heroine and one of the grown children of the owner of the estate, a son name Miles home from university at the behest of his professor to collect samples of moss from the nearby mire (which operates, like the moor in Hound of the Baskervilles, as a character). These two points of view, one from upstairs, one from down, one male, one female, are essential to the forging of the keys that unlock the mystery boxes hidden throughout the plot.

Along with Miles in the family McCleod are his father, brother, and sister. As far as the staff, there are the Gothically requisite cook, gardener, and handman—each playing their role, in turn, as conspirators, agitators, complicators, deliverers of information, suspects, and saboteurs. Other characters, deceased or absent, float like spectres through the windswept halls and grounds.

Speaking of McCleod, both this surname and another, Frazer, happen to be prevalent names in two beloved stories of the Highlands: Highlander and Outlander. I notice these things, author intention or not, which I find to be value added.  

As one would expect from this beloved genre, there are plentiful dreams, nightmares, hidden letters, grotesque illustrations, destructive secrets (some revealed in delightful twists), hints of hauntings, and glaring, staring portraits. Other locations on the estate, such as the hills and woods, distillery, and especially the ruins of a former abbey, add to the Gothic atmosphere and provide challenges for the estate’s inhabitants. Blackthorn’s ability to deliver rich, Dickensian detail without slowing down the narrative rivals that of Anne Rice, Robert Harris, and Ken Follett. Foods, clothing, home furnishings, and tools of the various trades are rendered with so much detail you can almost taste or touch them.

What Happened at the Abbey has a self-contained arc, with plenty of satisfying resolution, while keeping a firm hold on enough unanswered questions that the ending begs for it not to be. Blackthorn gives us a tantalizing last event that builds wonder and anticipation at the circumstances that’ll keep our heroine in contact with such a forbidding, formidable place.

I look forward to reading the second book in the series, Secrets Taken to the Grave, rather soon.