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| The Grave Tattoo | 
 enlarge | Author: Val Mcdermid
Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy Used: $0.01
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Avg. Customer Rating:  28 reviews
Sales Rank: 58952
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 448
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.4
ISBN: 0312936109
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780312936105
ASIN: 0312936109
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Ex-Library. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More.
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| Customer Reviews:
 The Lake District Gives Up Its Secrets May 6, 2007
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
"The Grave Tattoo," Val McDermid's latest, is a standalone mystery set in England's renowned, pastorally beautiful, genteel Lake District. McDermid, an award-winning, relatively new author, is best-known for her engrossing Dr. Tony Hill/ DCI Carol Jordan mystery series. At any rate, this book's plot involves two of the District's supposed native sons, each still famed in his own way: leading 19th Century Romantic Poet William Wordsworth; and Fletcher Christian, instigator of the contemporary, infamous Caine mutiny. According to the book, they were not only both local, but were also friends from earliest schooldays. Unfortunately, as I dropped the English major at school because it required the Romantic Poets; and gentility has never worked for me, I can't personally vouch for the truth of any of this.
McDermid has come up with an audacious idea to hang her plot on: that Christian found his way home from the Pacific Pitcairn Island where he'd settled, met his old friend Wordsworth, and debriefed him on the truth of the mutiny: Captain Bligh was then ascendent in England. Furthermore, that Wordsworth then wrote a long epic poem about the mutiny, but held it back from publication, as Christian was an unpopular, famous felon. And the law prescribed jail time for aiding and abetting. Supposedly, however, this meeting and the poem it produced live in local legend. But, once again, don't look to me to know anything about this.
The book opens after a rainy summer has brought a body to light in one of the district's bogs. At first glance, numerous characteristics, including the presence of black tattoos considered native to the 18th century South Seas area, suggest it might be Fletcher Christian. Jane Gresham, born-in-the-Lake District Wordsworth scholar, has long thought local gossip about the poet and the poem might be true, so the finding of this body causes her to go home to research the possibilities. In this effort, she is aided and hindered by her brother Matthew, forensic pathologist Dr. River Wilde (sic), Tenille Cole, a fugitive black teenaged friend (don't ask); her ex- Jake Hartnell, his current squeeze Caroline Kerr, both rare book dealers, and gay friend Dan Seaborne. But, for better or worse, when you consider and honor McDermid's core idea, I could have lived without a couple of the hackneyed subplots. To me, they just slow things up. But what do I know?
 "All landscapes hold their own secrets." February 25, 2007
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
In Val McDermid's "The Grave Tattoo," Jane Gresham is a post-doctoral researcher and Wordsworth specialist living on a shoestring budget in a run-down East End council estate. Besides teaching, Jane earns a little money working part-time in a bar and grill. Her somewhat pedestrian life changes radically when she embarks on a search for a long-lost narrative poem supposedly written by William Wordsworth concerning the plight of the famous mutineer, Fletcher Christian, Wordsworth's old friend and classmate. Jane Gresham is obsessed with finding this potentially priceless document, not so much for its monetary value as for its academic significance. Her interest is piqued even further when heavy rains flooding a Lake District bog lead to a grisly discovery: the body of a man with a distinctive tattoo, possibly even Christian himself, dating from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. Jane travels to her parents' farm in Fellhead to embark on a treasure hunt that turns out to be both frustrating and dangerous.
"The Grave Tattoo" has an intriguing premise and McDermid's lively storytelling makes for a suspenseful and engrossing tale. The large cast of characters includes Jake Hartnell, Jane's ex-boyfriend, a selfish opportunist with a secret agenda of his own, Matthew Gresham, Jane's resentful brother who squabbles with her constantly, and Dan Seabourne, a friend and fellow scholar who joins forces with her in her search. Dr. River Wilde is a beautiful forensic anthropologist whose job it is to examine the Fellhead cadaver, whom she dubs "Pirate Peat." Finally, a most unlikely character is a thirteen-year-old black girl named Tenille, a tough and extremely bright young lady with a penchant for getting into trouble. When she becomes a murder suspect, Tenille turns to her only friend in the world--Jane Gresham--for help.
McDermid's descriptive writing has always been one of her strong points and she waxes lyrical when describing the beauty of the Lake District: "The lake spangled dark sapphire in the autumn sun and River felt lucky not only to be alive but to be moving through nature at her most glamorous." The plot is filled with fascinating trivia about Wordsworth and the Bounty mutineers. Interspersed throughout the novel are short passages in which Fletcher Christian recounts his adventures both during and after the mutiny. As Jane and others seek out and interview Wordsworth's descendants in Fellhead, strange and unexpected deaths begin to occur and Jane herself is targeted by a desperate killer anxious to obtain the Wordsworth papers for himself. Although the book is marred by some stilted and occasionally long-winded dialogue, a sluggish second half, and a predictable conclusion, at least McDermid avoids tying up all of her plot elements too neatly. "The Grave Tattoo" is not McDermid's most skillfully crafted novel, but it will have strong appeal for those who love literary and historical mysteries.
A whale of a story February 14, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Why does the Bounty story fascinate us so? (Please don't say it's the sight of Mel Gibson in tight trousers and a pigtail.) From three movie versions to the celebrated Nordhoff and Hall trilogy, from contemporary 18th-century accounts to recent historiography, the tale of mutiny, survival and exile has been told and retold. In part I think it's the age-old drama of rebellion against tyranny: heroic Fletcher Christian confronting evil Captain Bligh, setting his former commander afloat in an open boat to make his way back to England, then leading the crew to a refuge on the obscure shores of Pitcairn Island. Modern interpretations, however, have corrected the romantic might versus right version with an awareness of class difference and historical context --- portraying Bligh not as a sadist but as a brilliant navigator whose leadership style was no more authoritarian than any other captain in Her Majesty's Navy at the time.
In THE GRAVE TATTOO we get yet another angle, albeit purely speculative, on the Bounty. Val McDermid, best known for her gritty, urban psychological thrillers, heads this time into historical/literary-mystery territory, playing with the hypothesis that Christian, who is understood to have been murdered a few years after reaching Pitcairn, didn't die. Instead, he escaped back to England, where he contacted the poet William Wordsworth (with whom he had gone to school) and told him the true story of the mutiny and its aftermath --- which became the basis for a lost epic poem.
McDermid's protagonist is young, pretty Wordsworth specialist Jane Gresham. When a reasonably intact body with tattoos from the South Sea Islands is found in a bog in the Lake Country, Jane realizes that it could be Fletcher Christian. Soon she is hot on the trail of the missing manuscript, tracing it to descendants of Wordsworth's housemaid, who attended his deathbed. When elderly members of that family start dying too frequently and conveniently, THE GRAVE TATTOO takes on some of the attributes of a more standard whodunit.
McDermid's technique is to alternate the modern tale with excerpts from the story Fletcher Christian told Wordsworth (she doesn't attempt a reconstruction of the lost poem) --- a double-barreled narrative device I've encountered quite a lot lately and of which I'm becoming a bit weary. She mixes in plenty of subplots and subsidiary characters, too: a broken romance for Jane; sibling rivalry between Jane and her petulant teacher brother; the trials of Jane's protege, Tenille, a 13-year-old mixed-race girl with a taste for Romantic poetry (the freshest voice in the book); the investigations of a forensic anthropologist named River Wilde (!) and her policeman boyfriend. There is also a good deal of rhapsodizing about the beauties of the Lake Country, where Jane spent her childhood, but the language often sounds like that of a travel brochure.
Unfortunately, that isn't the only sense in which this novel is predictable. McDermid has a couple of interesting (psychosexual) twists on what "really" happened, but I don't think THE GRAVE TATTOO succeeds either as a mystery (I guessed the villain way before the end) or a literary-historical puzzle. Background data about Wordsworth and the Bounty is introduced mechanically, via various handy stock characters, and clues turn up all too fortuitously; it's like a sketch for a novel rather than the real thing.
This is very odd, since I have found all of McDermid's work up until now absolutely riveting (notably her Carol Jordan/Tony Hill series, one of which I reviewed for this website a couple of years ago), with fiendishly clever plots and credible, complex characters. I'm all for authors reinventing themselves --- it's a shame to get stuck in a formula, no matter how successful --- but for me this experiment just didn't work.
I read THE GRAVE TATTOO while staying, appropriately, on an island, the sound of the sea crashing in the background and the smell of salt in the air. Probably we will never know which version of the mutiny --- because, Rashomon-like, there are several --- is true. When men and masters are trapped on a sailing ship, miles from anywhere, with tensions building and rage exploding, anything can happen and, evidently, did. It's still a whale of a story.
--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman
 wonderful literary sleuthing thriller February 18, 2007
6 out of 19 found this review helpful
Growing up in Fellhead in the English Lake Country area, Jane Gresham has heard numerous times the story of Fletcher Christian escaping the massacre at Pitcairn Island and returning to England where his schoolmate William Wordsworth gave him shelter. Further word of mouth through the generations is that Wordsworth wrote an epic poem re the adventures that the mutineer related to him, but this alleged work was either hidden or lost.
Everything suddenly changes when a corpse dated from the first half of the nineteenth century is uncovered in a nearby peat bog. The townsfolk immediately claim Fletcher has been found. Jane, a Wordsworth academic, sees an opportunity to determine whether the great poet ever did a take on Bounty mutiny and if true she wants to find the poem. Unbeknownst to the scholar is that her unprincipled former boyfriend and her acrimonious jealous brother amongst others seek the poem for personal gain with one willing to kill to succeed.
This is a fascinating mystery with present day "detectives" seeking a potential lost nineteenth century masterpiece. The switch back and forth between the two centuries is smooth and gripping as Val McDermid shows her talent at its best. Though the killer seems ironically obvious to readers, fans who appreciate something a bit different will want to read this wonderful literary sleuthing thriller.
Harriet Klausner
 Disappointing. March 7, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I have read almost all of Val McDermids books so I was very excited to see this new one in the bookstore. However the story never really takes off, the characterization is weak and does not develop and the story is pretty uninteresting.
The climax is reasonably well done but if one doesn't care about the characters who really cares?
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