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What Happened at the Abbey

The Strathbairn Trilogy, Book 1

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What Happened at the Abbey

By: Isobel Blackthorn
Narrated by: Kate Walsh
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When Ingrid flees a violent husband to become a housekeeper in the Scottish Highlands, she discovers the family she works for has a much darker history than her own.

Who haunts Strathbairn? Why are the adult McCleod children at each other’s throats? And why does the youngest sneak off at night? As Ingrid searches for answers, she grows ever more fearful that her husband will track her down.

Set in late 19th century Scottish Highlands, WHAT HAPPENED AT THE ABBEY is a gothic mystery brimming with intrigue, ghostly drama, and family secrets.

©2023 Isobel Blackthorn (P)2025 Isobel Blackthorn Historical Mystery Suspense Thriller & Suspense Highlander Haunted Marriage
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The chief protagonist of this book ‘Ingrid Barker’ is a survivor, and not just any survivor, but one that forms a much needed and almost archetypal form of female survivor in today's gritty world of realism, one we could call the ‘Solo Female Survivor’ archetype. Ingrid’s heart wrenching story is that of a woman desperately escaping domestic violence in London and grabbing with her nails any sort of chance of escape and sanctuary by taking up a job offer in the Scottish Highlands only to find her herself and her daughter at the mercy of a murky household of difficult and prickly characters. To use the old adage out of the frypan and into the fire in the intrigue that comes as she tries to weave a fabricated story of her past to survive in her current difficult new role as a housekeeper. In the book you’ll see the hard reality that Ingrid takes on with her daughter. She seems to be taking three steps forward and two steps back along a treacherous pathway of social survival trying to find a way ahead as she has to take on a humiliating role of servitude to survive from the gilded cage she escaped from. As she navigates her way through a social maze in a diabolical household, her principled heart steers her through all sorts of hopes and intrigues resulting in deeper mysteries that explode into a climatic and shocking outcomes of betrayal and horror, yet she perseveres giving the reader a sense of awe and respect in the strength of the solo female survivor archetype.

This book is quite special in the way Isobel Blackthorn brings her female characters to life. Isobel Blackthorn is on to something here in the way that she weaves strength and determination into her heroic yet interestingly slightly flawed female characters making them real, gutsy, believable and interesting. I’ve read a few of her books now and her endearing writing style is bringing a gift to the mystery genre by writing up strong female characters with a great sense of agency who triumph and survive against the odds. This is quite refreshing from the old patriarchal mystery novels of the past in which a woman has to be rescued by some man (yawn). Not so in the Blackthorn books like ‘What Happened at the Abbey’. Although as a reader I am a man, I can still identify with these strong female leads (which inspires the inner feminist of my Jungian Anima) so I’m giving this book Five Stars. Can’t wait to read the next one in the series.

Heroic female survival story in Scottish Setting.

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