The Grave Tattoo

Description

The award-winning and Number One bestselling Val McDermid crafts an electrifying psychological suspense thriller that mixes history, heritage and heinous crimes. A 200 year-old-secret is now a matter of life and death. And it could be worth a fortune. It's summer in the Lake District and heavy rain over the fells has uncovered a bizarrely tattooed body. Could it be linked to the old rumour that Fletcher Christian, mutinous First Mate on the Bounty, had secretly returned to England? Scholar Jane Gresham wants to find out. She believes that the Lakeland poet William Wordsworth, a friend of Christian's, may have sheltered the fugitive and turned his tale into an epic poem - which has since disappeared. But as she follows each lead, death is hard on her heels. The centuries-old mystery is putting lives at risk. And it isn't just the truth that is waiting to be discovered, but a bounty worth millions ...

Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending the last three as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday tabloid. She divides her time between Northumberland and Cheshire.

'An irresistible combination of contemporary psychological thriller and historical mystery' Tess Gerritsen 'Cunning and gripping... A substantially entertaining novel which grips the reader's interest from the first page until the final deeply satisfying sentence' Express 'Trying to solve a 200-year-old mystery becomes increasingly lethal and readable' Mirror 'One of the world's leading mystery writers...Thomas Harris crossed with Agatha Christie, if you will... A great read. England's heritage history has never been so chilling' Observer 'Safe for the squeamish... one of her best' Literary Review