The Grave Tattoo

LoveReading Says

Val McDermid is the winner of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger Award 2010, which honours outstanding achievement in the field of crime writing.

Shortlisted for the Crime Thriller of the Year Award at the Galaxy British Book Awards 2008.

Val McDermid's latest riveting crime thriller, The Grave Tattoo  is very different to much of her previous work; it is no less riveting but it has a truly huge breadth and depth of canvas, which she has pulled off with great aplomb. Fletcher Christian was the man responsible for seizing command of the Bounty from Bligh in 1789 and his death on Pitcairn island has never been truly confirmed and did he in fact die in his beloved Lake District?   Christian was distantly related to William Wordsworth, and was an old school friend of the poet and this forms the basis for a superb psychological thriller in which a present-day murder and a Wordsworth manuscript have their routes in the eighteenth century and the mutiny.  When a tattooed body is found half-preserved in the brackish water of a peat bog local Wordsworth scholar Jane Gresham jumps at the chance to investigate. We feel The Grave Tattoo  will be thoroughly enjoyed by her existing fan base but also be enjoyed equally by those who thrive on finding clues as well weaving historical investigative work with the present.

LoveReading

About The Grave Tattoo

When torrential summer rains uncover a bizarrely tattooed body on a Lake District hillside, old wives' tales also come swirling to the surface. For centuries Lakelanders have whispered that Fletcher Christian staged the massacre on Pitcairn so that he could return home. And there he told his story to an old friend and schoolmate, William Wordsworth, who turned it into a long narrative poem – a poem that remained hidden lest it expose Wordsworth to the gallows for harbouring a fugitive.

Read the full description

Find This Book In