I found how the older tale was divulged to the reader to be clever, fun and imaginative. The majority of the story was set in the Lake District and descriptions of waterfalls and hills and lakes, as always, appealed to the geography geek in me. All the characters were expertly crafted and their personalities and motivations came across as authentic. I really enjoyed how the two mysteries, the one from 200 years ago and the one unfolding as we read, played out.

The Grave Tattoo is a complex, intelligent mystery with a great setting and engaging cast of characters. I’ve had a few Val McDermid novels on my bookshelf for a while but The Grave Tattoo is the first one I’ve read, and I must say, I wish I had got to this one sooner. (From The Grave Tattoo by Val McDermid, page, 363) “Jane couldn’t remember a time when Langmere Force hadn’t mesmerised her, taking her out of what ever ailed her and making her feel healed.” And with each new lead she pursues, death follows hard on her heels…. What she never expected was to find herself at the heart of a 200-year-old mystery that still has the power to put lives on the line. Scholar and native Lakelander Jane Gresham feels compelled to finally discover the truth about the myths and buried secrets rooted in her hometown. 4 / 5įrom bestselling author Val McDermid comes a modern thriller about an ancient murder set on the high seas…Īfter summer rains uncover a corpse bearing tattoos like those of eighteenth-century seafarers, many residents of the English Lake District can’t help but wonder whether it’s the body of one of the town’s most legendary fugitives. (Feb.The Grave Tattoo is a complex, intelligent mystery with a great setting and engaging cast of characters. Boasting blurbs from such notable authors as Harlan Coben, Tess Gerritsen and Joseph Finder, this could be McDermid's break-out book. ) vividly contrasts marginal subsistence in London's dismal Marshpool neighborhood with the Lake District's bucolic lifestyle. With a feminist, socially conscious spin, McDermid ( The Distant Echo Various subplots complicate her quest, including a fraught friendship with precocious 13-year-old Tenille, a lonely, mixed-race girl who also loves Romantic poetry.

Jane searches relentlessly for a lost manuscript by the poet Wordsworth that relates Christian's tale in tantalizing excerpts between chapters. A shriveled body found in a bog seems to bear resemblance to this dashing hero, right down to the South Sea tattoos that blacken his buttocks. Mutineer Fletcher Christian returned secretly from exile to his homeland in the late 18th century. Scholar Jane Gresham pursues her theory that HMS Bounty An intriguing, 200-year-old mystery propels this multilayered stand-alone from British author McDermid set in England's Lake District.