The Grave Tattoo (2006)

Transferred from my spreadsheet to Goodreads

This is a different sort of story and for most of it it was less a crime story, that I was expecting, then a mystery treasure hunt story. There were parts of this I didn't like and it's hard to explain why, it just didn't grab me. Though the ending did get a bit better, more exciting and intense after a long drawn out hunt. ( )

Val McDermid once again delivers perfectly on a fantastic piece of stand-alone crime literature, and The Grave Tattoo is an intelligently written, gripping piece of writing, that takes the reader from the rough back streets of London, to the rolling hills of the Lake District.

At the centre of it all is Jane Gresham, a Wordsworth scholar, who, in hearing about a mysterious ancient body that has washed up during a flood, finds herself pursuing a theory she has long had, that Fletcher Christian, master’s mate on board the Bounty, didn’t die, but instead returned to the UK secretly. Believing that the body might be his, Jane begins investigating the possibility that Fletcher entrusted his return in William Wordsworth (his contemporary), and that secret documentation about this, written by Wordsworth, might have been passed down through generations. However, in the process of her pursuit, she finds herself running from an ex-boyfriend out to cause trouble, helping out a teenage girl who becomes embroiled in a series of unfortunate circumstances, and trying to work out why people around her keep on mysteriously dying.

As ever, McDermid is faultless in delivering spectacularly on suspense, character depiction and also stirring interest in areas that other contemporaries wouldn’t touch with a bargepole. Taking a historical myth and working it into a piece of contemporary fiction is not anything most authors would do lightly, but she does it with ease and intellect, demonstrating all too easily why she’s the reigning queen of crime fiction. ( )

A body with tattoos has been found in a lakes district bog. Could it be Fletcher Christian, notorious mutineer on The Bounty, who may have sneaked back home to family and told his story to his old school chum, Wordsworth? And did Wordsworth write a poem about Christian's experiences that was never published, which might still exist? Scholar Jan Gresham thinks so. And maybe some of the less scrupulous do too. Meanwhile, just as Jane goes off to her home turf to research her theory, there's trouble in her apartment block. A man is found brutally murdered in a burnt out apartment, and Jane's young friend - an urban teen with a penchant for poetry - is implicated.

The book has a slow start but after the first 100 pages, I was finally hooked. McDermid again creates interesting and complex characters worth following, all within an equally complex and detailed story. The ending was a bit less satisfying than I would have liked, not sure I completely buy into her resolution of the various storylines. One seemed to only have been created to service the main storyline, so I was a bit disappointed there. But, still, it was an enjoyable read (I liked [The Distant Echo] better) and I'll continue to look for more McDermid. ( )

Clever working of background about the Mutiny of the Bounty and Fletcher Christian into a modern day mystery of an old body suddenly revealed in the Lake District. A Wordsworth scholar believes that there is a lost story of Fletcher Christian as told to Wordsworth and her hunt for it arouses the interest of others less scrupulous. Good plotting and characters, although I did guess the identify of one of those plotting, but it didn't spoil the story for me. ( )