The Grave Tattoo CD + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The Grave Tattoo CD

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 ForshawRead More

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    This is a superb psychological thriller in which present-day murder has its roots in the eighteenth century and the mutiny on the Bounty. 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. Wordsworth specialist Jane Gresham herself a native of the Lake District feels compelled to discover once and for all whether the manuscript ever existed-- and whether it still exists today. But as she pursues each new lead death follows hard on her heels. Suddenly Jane is at the heart of a 200-year-old mystery that still has the power to put lives on the line. Against the dramatic backdrop of England's Lake District a drama of life and death plays out its ultimate prize a bounty worth millions.

  • 0007211317
  • 9780007211319
  • Val McDermid
  • 2 October 2006
  • HarperCollins
  • Audio CD (CD)
  • Abridged edition (Reissue)
  • Abridged, Audiobook, CD
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