barbara fister reviewed The Grave Tattoo by Val McDermid
Review of 'The Grave Tattoo' on 'LibraryThing'
3 stars
Hmmm. Val McDermid is a great writer, but something about this particular book didn't quite work for me. There's a fascinating bit of history in play here, the fact that Fletcher Christian and Wordsworth were contemporaries in time and place. When a bog body is found bearing South Sea Island tattoos, a struggling literary scholar who has found a tantalizing clue about a hidden Wordsworth manuscript hopes to find an epic poem based on Christian's return to England and his side of the mutiny story. But somehow the love of literature and the whole literary hunt thing, combined with someone knocking off people to get there first, just didn't quite click. Maybe it was my mood. I found the characters and landscape of The Distant Echo far more compelling.
