The Grave Tattoo

November 6, 2006
An intriguing, 200-year-old mystery propels this multilayered stand-alone from British author McDermid set in England's Lake District. Scholar Jane Gresham pursues her theory that HMS Bounty
mutineer Fletcher Christian returned secretly from exile to his homeland in the late 18th century. 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. Jane searches relentlessly for a lost manuscript by the poet Wordsworth that relates Christian's tale in tantalizing excerpts between chapters. 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. With a feminist, socially conscious spin, McDermid (The Distant Echo
) vividly contrasts marginal subsistence in London's dismal Marshpool neighborhood with the Lake District's bucolic lifestyle. Boasting blurbs from such notable authors as Harlan Coben, Tess Gerritsen and Joseph Finder, this could be McDermid's break-out book. 100,000 printing; author tour.

As an audiobook production, THE GRAVE TATTOO is wonderfully managed. Kate Reading (a narrator who's mastered Jane Austen and Patricia Cornwell) combines history and mystery while performing spot-on voicing and accentsâ this time capturing the characters of Northern England. McDermid's novel is ambitious--modern-day researchers are racing to make a link between a body discovered in a bog and Fletcher Christian, one of the mutineers who took part in the Mutiny on THE BOUNTY. At times, some of the plot points seem stretched. Particularly odd is the subplot about a teenaged mixed-race woman with a penchant for William Wordsworth. Though well written and well told, readers may still wish some of the story lines were more clearly focused. R.W.S. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine