Val McDermid’s ‘The Grave Tattoo’ is truly an intriguing concept, with a modern-day mystery and murder tied up with a fascinating tale from two centuries before.
By Joan Ruddiman Special Writer
Val McDermid has more than two dozen murder mysteries to her credit. She has been called “England’s most successful mystery writer.”
“The Grave Tattoo” (St. Martin’s Minotaur, 2006) departs from her popular Tony Hill series and other police-centered characters to tackle a 200-year-old rumor in England’s Lake District.
She acknowledges that the “seed for this book” came from Alan Hankinson — who knows the rumors — in a talk to the Northern Chapter of the Crime Writer’s Association “some years ago.” Mr. Hankinson — known as Hank — was a veteran rock climber and a “passionate devotee of the Lake District,” according to his obituary. The story he told has long been the stuff of rumor among Lakelanders.
The whispers say that Fletcher Christian, the villain-hero who led the mutiny on the HMS Bounty, did not die on Pitcairn Island, but rather staged the massacre so he could return home to the Lake District, which is also the home of his old friend and schoolmate, the great English poet William Wordsworth.
The story is compelling and, for an English major, irresistible. Ms. McDermid — having read English at St. Hilda’s, Oxford — was hooked. The result after much research on Wordsworth and overcoming some serious writing issues is “The Grave Tattoo,” which takes the rumor — through fictive imaginings — several steps further.
When my reading pal Denise suggested this one, my English major’s heart couldn’t resist. Though, as Denise had warned, the novel is unevenly executed, I did read through to the end.
“The Mutiny on the Bounty” story is well known, thanks to literature and several film versions. This is a case where truth is better than fiction.
Captain William Bligh, with Fletcher Christian as Master’s Mate, sailed on HMS Bounty Dec. 23, 1787, for Tahiti, where they were to get breadfruit plants. Captain Bligh has become the epitome of the abusive captain, though Caroline Alexander in “The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty” (Viking, 2003), makes a case that Bligh was relatively lenient compared with other naval officers of his time.
Though the crew enjoyed rest and respite in Tahiti while they tended the young plants, tensions erupted. On April 28, 1789, Fletcher Christian, with about 40 others, mutinied against their captain. It was a bloodless coup, ending with Bligh and 18 men loyal to him being cast adrift in an open sea.
With great nautical skills and some good luck, Captain Bligh and most of his crew survived at sea. Bligh eventually made his way back to England where he filed his story, which then spread far and wide. Mr. Christian was repudiated as a mutineer.
Later, Christian’s reputation was further muddied by the tales of Pitcairn and the “nirvana” he and his fellow mutineers attempted to establish on the backs of the native people.
Typically, there are two sides to a story — and literature has been kinder to Fletcher Christian than his contemporaries. This is the story that Ms. McDermid picks up as she builds on the basic facts to concoct a tale of intrigue that extends to the descendants of the original characters.
A man’s body is found in a bog in the Lake District, reasonably well preserved. Dr. River Wilde dubs the man —heavily tattooed with long hair — “Pirate Pete.” She is a medical examiner who intends to make a name for herself by conducting the autopsy for a “solve the mystery of the body in the bog” series to be filmed by an English version of the History Channel. That is just a sidebar to the main story, however. One of several, which may be why the whole of the novel is not satisfying.
The main character is Dr. Jane Gresham, a Wordsworth specialist. A native Lakelander, Jane knows the rumors and has long harbored a theory that Wordsworth wrote a great narrative poem about Fletcher Christian, which he never revealed for fear it would incriminate him for aiding a fugitive.
The imagined writings of Wordsworth, who writes down his friend Fletcher’s sorry tale, are well executed by Ms. McDermid. The scenes with Jane and Anthony the Wordsworth curator are equally captivating as they discuss theory and history.
Where Ms. McDermid seems to stray is by introducing several other conflicts that appear to exist as contrivances to move the plot along or to increase dramatic tension.
For example, there is the character of Tenille, a 13-year-old neighbor who lives near Jane in the Marshfield ghetto. Tenille is intellectually precocious but not especially endearing. In an interview with Jenny Murray of the BBC, Ms. McDermid admitted that Tenille was initially “a plot device at the start of the book,” but that she developed the character as the book moved along.
Unfortunately, Tenille’s role in the mystery is so contrived that it is an unwelcome distraction from what proves to be a great plot twist.
Then there is the relationship between Jane and her brother. Matthew is introduced with some detail, which then seems to go nowhere. The truly vicious antagonism between the siblings seems false, given the happy parents and loving home that Jane so adores. Again, there is some dramatic tension intended by having Jane suspect her brother of nefarious doings, but her intense reactions to him, and his to her, are inexplicable.
Ms. McDermid says that she did attempt a “different type of sleuth” in this novel. “The story comes first, not a police inspector,” or an attempt to tell the story with one of her series characters.
“The character has to be driven by a different thirst,” she said, and in this case, it’s an academic thirst.
Jane as the passionate Wordsworth scholar is believable and elicited this reader’s concern. But beyond Jane’s academic pursuits, her character’s development seems unfinished. Her relationships with erstwhile boyfriend Jake and her gay best friend Dan don’t ring true. Is she, or isn’t she, a good judge of character? Author McDermid vacillates, again it seems, based on how she needs to guide the plot.
Ewan Rigston, the police inspector of little Keswick village, comes across very well, however. Ms. McDermid just may be more comfortable with the police genre and thus knows how to fully develop a cop character.
She writes to her fans in a log missive posted on her Web site that writing “The Grave Tattoo” was a challenge. Writer’s block had taken hold for the first time in her long career — as an award-winning journalist, then a playwright and now a longtime, very successful novelist. She writes that she could not understand why it was so hard to “find my way” with the story.
“I’d been building this book in my head for years, doing the research, figuring out the story.” Yet, she writes, “I couldn’t pin down the kind of detail that would let me draw my map.”
The result is most likely not what the author envisioned. “The Grave Tattoo” is truly an intriguing concept with a modern day mystery and murder tied up with a fascinating tale from two centuries before. With stronger characters, and less characters (several less!), the novel could have been great, rather than merely moderately satisfying.