{"id":5540,"date":"2024-03-20T07:10:15","date_gmt":"2024-03-20T14:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5540"},"modified":"2024-03-20T07:10:15","modified_gmt":"2024-03-20T14:10:15","slug":"erica-ruth-neubauer-secrets-of-a-scottish-isle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/erica-ruth-neubauer-secrets-of-a-scottish-isle\/","title":{"rendered":"Erica Ruth Neubauer: Secrets of a Scottish Isle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jane Wunderly #5<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Secrets of a Scottish Isle<\/em> is the fifth full-length book in Erica Ruth Neubauer’s Jane Wunderly series, which also includes a delightful e-novella, Murder Under the Mistletoe<\/em>.\u00a0 Set in the 1920s, the series features the American war widow Jane, who travels the world after the death of her abusive husband has left her a free woman.\u00a0 Each book has a different setting.\u00a0 So far, Jane’s adventures have taken her to Egypt, an English country house, an Atlantic crossing on the sister ship of the Titanic, Istanbul, the north of England (in the e-novella), and, in this novel, Iona, a remote island off the west coast of Scotland.<\/p>\n

While she was in Egypt, Jane met the enigmatic Englishman Redvers, who carries out secret missions for the British government.\u00a0 She and Redvers felt an immediate attraction for each other, but Jane was reluctant to fall in love again after the disaster of her first marriage.\u00a0 Slowly she has come to realize that Redvers is completely unlike her first husband, and she has acknowledged her feelings.\u00a0 By this time, they are engaged.\u00a0 Until now, though, Jane has hesitated about setting a wedding date, because she doesn’t want to rush into marriage.\u00a0 The developing relationship between Jane and Redvers is one of the strengths of the series, and Neubauer handles it very well.\u00a0 The relationship develops at just the right pace–not too quickly or too slowly.<\/p>\n

This book takes place in March 1927, when Jane is sent to Iona to go undercover as a member of a secret society called the Order of the Golden Dawn.\u00a0 The organization Redvers works for is thinking of recruiting the group’s leader, Robert Nightingale, as an agent, but they have doubts about him.\u00a0 Redvers cannot be part of the mission, because Nightingale knows who he is, so he asks Jane to play the role of a new member of the occult group.\u00a0 The novel begins with the ritual of her initiation into the society.\u00a0 Jane does not believe in the supernatural and is skeptical of the Golden Dawn and their rites and ceremonies, but she must maintain her role so she can pass information on the group’s leader to Redvers.\u00a0 One of the members of the society is the poet William Butler Yeats, who had a fascination with the occult.\u00a0 Neubauer’s author’s note says that the Golden Dawn was a real group (even though Nightingale is fictional), and Yeats was a member, but in real life he had left the order a few years before the events of the novel.<\/p>\n

Because Redvers cannot be a part of the investigation, he stays on the opposite side of the island from Jane, and they have to meet in secret.\u00a0 This separation means that we don’t get as much of the witty dialogue between the two that we usually do, so some readers might be disappointed.\u00a0 But we see some of it during their secret meetings, and there is a big pay-off at the end, but I don’t want to spoil things by saying what it is.<\/p>\n

Jane stays in a cottage owned by a couple, Michael and Fiona McCrary, along with Netta, a young woman who’s a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn<\/a>.\u00a0 Michael shares Jane’s skepticism about the occult, but Fiona has an uncanny ability to tell the future with tarot cards, and even Jane has to admit that her tarot readings usually prove to be right.\u00a0 Netta begins behaving erratically, first locking herself in her room and then wandering the moors, in the cold, rainy Scottish March weather, wearing nothing but a cloak.\u00a0 It turns out she wants to leave the order.\u00a0 But the order doesn’t let people leave very easily.<\/p>\n

Soon after Netta expresses this wish, her dead body is found on a hill, with mysterious scratch marks all over her.\u00a0 At first, since there are no obvious wounds besides the scratches, it is not clear whether she died of exposure or was murdered, and the autopsy is inconclusive.\u00a0 (This being a mystery, though, of course she was murdered.)\u00a0 Shortly after Netta’s death, her father appears on the island, showing less concern about his daughter than about the contents of her will, which makes Jane start to doubt that he really is her father.\u00a0 Netta was quite wealthy, having inherited money from her mother.\u00a0 Her father, who did not have access to the money while Netta was alive, made some bad investments and needs the money.<\/p>\n

Two versions of Netta’s will turn up, one leaving all her money to her father and the other leaving it to the Golden Dawn.\u00a0 Nightingale, of course, insists that the second version of the will is the authentic one, and has a loud argument with Netta’s father.\u00a0 Relationships among the members of the Golden Dawn are complicated.\u00a0 The group had split into two factions: Nightingale’s and another, led by Mina Mathers<\/a>, one of the original founders of the society (who was a real person).\u00a0 Some say the split happened because of a love affair gone bad.\u00a0 Rumors fly about Nightingale’s romantic relations with various female members of the Golden Dawn, but none of them have been substantiated.<\/p>\n

Another female member of the group, Dion Fortune<\/a> (also a real person) claims that Mina attacked her and Netta on the “astral plane,” a higher plane of existence, and tells a fanciful story about black cats sent by Mina attacking the two women.\u00a0 Jane doesn’t believe it for a minute, of course.\u00a0 Who, among the members of the Golden Dawn, could have killed Netta?<\/p>\n

As the group prepares for a spring equinox rite, which attracts people from both factions, as well as non-members of the group, to the island, Jane must find out who the murderer is.\u00a0 Nightingale and others are starting to become suspicious of her because she’s asking so many questions, and they’re beginning to think her interest in the rites of the Golden Dawn isn’t genuine.\u00a0 If she doesn’t find the killer soon, she might find herself the next victim.<\/p>\n

Secrets of a Scottish Isle<\/em> is an intriguing, suspenseful novel, even though I admit I guessed who the killer was.\u00a0 But there is one turn in the plot that I got wrong.\u00a0 (I was right about who, but not why.)\u00a0 Neubauer, as always, immerses the reader in the atmosphere of whichever setting she’s writing about.\u00a0 I felt the cold, damp, and gloom of the Scottish winter\/early spring.\u00a0 It’s the perfect spooky setting for a mystery about occult societies.\u00a0 The series is perfect for fans of Tasha Alexander and Dianne Freeman, even though it’s set later than those two series.\u00a0 The romantic banter between the two leads will be familiar to readers of Alexander or Freeman.\u00a0 I am looking forward to finding out where Jane’s adventures will take her next. —\u00a0Vicki Kondelik<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jane Wunderly #5 Secrets of a Scottish Isle is the fifth full-length book in Erica Ruth Neubauer’s Jane Wunderly series, which also includes a delightful e-novella, Murder Under the Mistletoe.\u00a0 Set in the 1920s, the series features the American war widow Jane, who travels the world after the death of her abusive husband has left … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1557,350,1556,1555,351,162,1554,273],"class_list":["post-5540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-1927-scotland","tag-erica-ruth-neubauer","tag-golden-age-style","tag-iona","tag-jane-wunderly","tag-kensington-books","tag-secrets-of-a-scottish-isle","tag-vicki-kondelik"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5540"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5542,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5540\/revisions\/5542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}