Product Description

Present-day murder has its roots in the eighteenth century and the mutiny on the Bounty in this highly acclaimed new psychological thriller. A 200 year-old-secret is now a matter of life and death. And it could be worth a fortune. It's summer in the Lake District and torrential rain has uncovered a bizarrely tattooed body on a hillside. Could it be linked to centuries-old rumours that surround Fletcher Christian, mutinous First Mate on the ill-fated Bounty, a legendary massacre on the strange island of Pitcairn, and Christian's possible return to England? Jane Gresham wants to know. An expert on Wordsworth, she has a theory that the Lakeland poet, a childhood friend of Christian's, had harboured the fugitive and turned his tale into an epic poem -- which has since stayed hidden. But as she follows each lead, death is hard on her heels. The 200-year-old mystery is putting lives at risk. And it isn't just the truth that is waiting to be discovered, but a bounty worth millions of pounds!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24072 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
It's a time-honoured tradition that the best crime writers begin to chafe at the constraints of their area of the genre and feel a need to stretch their literary muscles. With The Grave Tattoo, the estimable Val McDermid demonstrates that she, too, has felt the need of a change from her contemporary novels of crime and detection, and here takes on a truly ambitious panoply. Not that McDermid has been afraid to tackle unconventional subjects before--it's just that the scale of this novel is even more impressive. A corpse is discovered on a hill in the Lake District, adorned with bizarre tattoos. Wordsworth expert Jane Gresham finds herself distracted from her studies of the great Lakeland poet when another mystery surfaces, involving the Pitcairn Massacre and the events of the mutiny on the Bounty. Is it possible that Fletcher Christian, who led the rebellion against Captain Bligh, faked his own death and clandestinely returned to England? Jane makes a connection between the tattooed body and the tattoos on sailors who served in the South Seas--is this the body of Fletcher Christian? And Jane has another problem on her hands--a young girl who she has tried to help finds herself a murder suspect, and tracks her down to the Lakes. And as Jane closes in on a Wordsworth manuscript that may be a direct transcription of Fletcher Christian’s confession, she finds herself with someone else on her trail--an ex-lover with similar designs on the precious document.

As all this might suggest, McDermid has set herself a truly daunting task here, with a canvas so crammed with incident, colour and character. And when the reader learns that the central narrative is counterpointed with sections from the Fletcher Christian document, it's clear that we are a long way away from the medical and criminological puzzles of Wire in the Blood. It is to McDermid's credit that she draws so many strands together with such assurance.
--Barry Forshaw

Review
Praise for 'The Grave Tattoo': 'Absorbing modern mystery!McDermid's mix of historical and literary clues with modern detection is handled with panache.' The Times 'One of the world's leading mystery writers!Thomas Harris crossed with Agatha Christie, if you will! a great read. England's heritage history has never been so chilling.' Observer 'A cleverly plotted thriller. It should gain her a crowd of new fans.' Guardian 'One of her best.' Literary Review 'One of our most accomplished crime writers!compelling.' Glasgow Herald Praise for 'The Torment of Others': 'One of McDermid's finest, which is saying a lot' The Times 'Val McDermid is an intelligent, supremely talented novelist and with this latest tale, she is writing at the height of her power. Utterly compelling' Glasgow Herald 'Serial killers, though meat and drink, to crime writers, are thankfully rare. It is a tribute to the power of Val McDermid's imagination that she made this one seem so believable' Daily Telegraph 'Complex, combative and nuanced' Express 'Val McDermid, as ever, is adept at engendering irresistible suspense, as the fearsome attractiveness of the ever more benighted and bloody predicament works its effect on readers' Times Literary Supplement 'There are some terrific twists. McDermid gives a new jerk to the storyline and the chase is on again' Scotland on Sunday 'No one compares to McDermid' Guardian 'This is McDermid on top form -- pass the valium' Daily Mail

Daily Express
'A substantially entertaining novel which grips the reader’s interest from the first page until the final deeply satisfying sentence’

Customer Reviews

Surprisingly Good!
I do like being proven wrong.
I actually went along to the talk and signing of this book by the author at my local library. My two friends had stacks of previous titles they wanted Val to sign, I just went along for something to do.
I have only read one book by Val McDermaid, and because we arrived late into the lecture theatre and missed the beginning, I was quite sure that total would stay at one. Val was talking about the Lake District, Fletcher Christian, Mutiny on the Bounty, Captain Bligh, Wordsworth, etc, etc.........I think I had a little snooze at this point, I'd had a long day. Anyway, I revitalised myself slightly when Val was answering questions, (in between great swigs of Stella Artois, [Val, not me, I stuck to the free coffee and gypsy creams.]) and it wasn't a bad evening.
Back to the book - I managed to get hold of a copy to see what all the fuss was about, and knowing that there was some criminal element weaved into the plot, I thought it couldn't be all that bad.
I nearly read it one go. It had everything you would want from a great crime novel, especially if you are a geek, and you get to learn something new. If, like me, you know nothing of the mutiny and Fletcher Christian and Pitcairn, (I bet you're thinking now, 'eh?'), don't worry, its a top read, nice and easy, with beautiful language.

"My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains"
Fletcher Chistian (1764 - 1793) was a Master's Mate on board the Bounty during William Bligh's fateful voyage to Tahiti for breadfruit plants and it was Fletcher Christian who seized command of the Bounty from Bligh on April 28th 1789 claiming the crew were suffering from inhuman treatment. Christian ended up living on Pitcairn Island, where he later died along with the other mutineers.

But did Christian really die or was his murder faked? Rumors have persisited for a hundred years that he had indeed left the Island, and that he eventually made it all the way back to England, where he lived out the rest of his life in his birthplace, hidden from justice by his family and friends, safely ensconced in the Cumbria, Lake District area of England.

This legend and the fact that Christian was distantly related to William Wordsworth, he was even an old school friend of the poet, forms the basis for Val McDermid's latest riveting crime thriller, The Grave Tattoo. When a tattooed body is found half preserved in the brackish water of a peat bog just outside of Fellhead, local Wordsworth scholar Jane Gresham jumps at the chance to investigate.

Jane has been living a hand-to-mouth existence in a council flat on the rundown Marshpool Farm Estate in London, a known habitué for drug dealers, pimps and petty criminals, so she sees the discovery of this body as an opportunity to raise herself out of semi-poverty and perhaps prove her long-held theory that indeed Fletcher did return to England and chose to tell his version of events to his old school friend.

Jane is banking on the fact that Wordsworth couldn't have ignored a story as big as this, and that the absence of direct written evidence in William's published work does not mean that the events she pictured did not take place. She's also convinced there was a lost masterpiece, a poem that Wordsworth wrote about the legend of what happened to his friend who ended up being one of the most notorious figures of the eighteenth century.

Whilst Jane travels to her childhood home of Fellhead, her thirteen-year-old friend Tenille - who has a unique gift for interpreting poetry - is stuck back in London, at the mercy of her aunt's obnoxious boyfriend. When a terrible tragedy strikes in the form of a deadly murder and a house fire, Tenille finds herself caught up with her estranged father, a merciless London gangster called the Hammer.

Forced into hiding and on the run from the police, Tenille too travels to the Lake District in order to find Jane, sure that only her friend can help her because of her unique understanding of the way the world works. Meanwhile, reports of a secret manuscript are circulating, rumored to have been entrusted into the care of one of the Wordsworth family servants, a maid called Dorcas Mason, who had actually worked for William Wordsworth and who was perhaps given his undiscovered poem for safekeeping.

Of course, there are other people who have a keen interest invested in obtaining the illusive manuscript: There's Jane's ex-boyfriend Jake Hartnell and his wealthy sugar mum Caroline, a money hungry manuscript dealer who knows how valuable the find could be. She ends up enlisting Jake to go the Midlands to see if he can track the document down.

Jane is also helped on her investigations be her best friend and colleague Dan, who admits that he would also like to reap the benefits of the discovery. And although Jane constantly fights with him, she knows deep down that her brother Matthew - the town's local school principal - is always on her side.

While Jane's investigation becomes ever more convoluted in a developing series of clues, local forensic anthropologist Dr. River Wilde continues to evaluate the bog body, hoping that the tattoos - synonymous with eighteenth century sailors from the South Sea Islands - will eventually shed some light on his identity.

As the complicated mystery disentangles, the action intensifies and this bucolic and isolated setting becomes a noxious battleground, and a deadly cat and mouse game as murder swiftly becomes the name of the game. Obviously Dorcas Mason's past was a secret history as far as her family was concerned, but someone, somewhere has a little treasure trove whose contents have never been thoroughly explored.

When the distant descendants of Dorcas, now in their eighties, start suddenly dying, Jane's suspicions are aroused and she finds herself becoming caught up in an elaborate trap of treachery and complicity, which is eventually compounded with the bitter taste of betrayal. Someone out there is determined to usurp her and find the manuscript before she does, even resorting to killing her to achieve his or her ends.

Edgy and atmospheric, Grave Tattoo is an historian's delight, a fascinating mix of genealogy and genetics, as McDermid's compelling narrative effortlessly hops from the past to present, tossing bits of information around about the legend of Fletcher Christian as she entwines an exciting tale of English history, family secrets and deception lurking in places where you least expect it.

The evidence is suggestive; if nothing else, it's all-circumstantial, but the images of Tenille, of blood and fire, and of smoke chased chaotic montages of her family and friends, spur Jane on in her penultimate journey to discover her favorite poet's long-lost work and hopefully find the real truth behind what happened to the legendary Fletcher Christian.

Full of tension and treachery The Grave Tattoo is McDermid's most accomplished work yet, a taut and tight psychological thriller which shows us what happens when unbridled ambition can get in the way of friendship. Mike Leonard February 07.

Also disappointed
When I first heard about this book, I though it a fascinating idea that Fletcher Christian may have returned to the Lake District to visit his friend Wordsworth. Unfortunately, from early on in the story, I was very disappointed with it. The integration of the present day story with the Fletcher Christian mystery did not work for me and the written passages supposedly from Fletcher's diary could have been omitted altogether. There were also too many characters and too many sub-plots. Many of the characters were unbelievable and several of the sub-plots were left unresolved. As far as 'whodunnit', it almost seemed as if the writer did not decide until the end who the villain would be - and then glossed over any inconsistencies!

Having read many of Val's books, I expected much more and found this frustrating rather than an enjoyable read.