“The Highland Game Is Afoot”: A Review of Secrets Taken to the Grave (The Strathbairn Trilogy, Book 2) by Isobel Blackthorn
(Next Chapter, 2025). ISBN: 979-8272238542 A few months ago, I reviewed the first book in this trilogy, What Happened at the Abbey , which I enjoyed for its vivid locales, Gothic tropes, and interesting characters. Having received the complete trilogy in a single volume, I knew that the story’s heroine, Ingrid Barker—the self-styled widow of Winchester—would return to the formidable, Usheresque mansion in Straithbairn, in the Highlands of Scotland, although I had no clue as to how or why. Her time with the owners, the McCleods, for whom she served as housekeeper in What Happened at the Abbey , was anything but pleasant, and she left under multilayered, malignant circumstances. Book two opens with the return of Ingrid and her precocious preteen daughter for the funeral of the McCleod patriarch, which launches a set of mystery boxes into motion. Ingrid, being a fan of Sherlock Holmes ( Secrets… takes place in 1893; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has just killed off the wo...