The Grave Tattoo Audiobook By Val McDermid cover art

The Grave Tattoo

Preview

Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Grave Tattoo

By: Val McDermid
Narrated by: Kate Reading
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $20.24

Buy for $20.24

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

In The Grave Tattoo, suspense master Val McDermid spins a psychological thriller in which a present-day murder has its roots in the eighteenth century and the mutiny on the H.M.S. Bounty.

After torrential summer rains uncover a bizarrely tattooed body on a Lake District hillside, a long-disregarded old wives' tale takes on a chilling new plausibility. For centuries, Lakelanders have whispered that Fletcher Christian, made infamous by Mutiny on the Bounty, staged the massacre on Pitcairn so that he could return home. And once there, what if he could tell his story to an old friend and schoolmate, William Wordsworth, who turned it into a long narrative poem—a poem that remained hidden lest it expose Wordsworth to the gallows for harboring a fugitive?

Wordsworth specialist Jane Gresham, herself a native of the Lake District, feels compelled to discover once and for all whether the manuscript ever existed—and whether it still exists today. But as she pursues each new lead, death follows hard on her heels. Suddenly Jane is at the heart of a 200-year-old mystery that still has the power to put lives on the line.

©2006 Val McDermid (P)2007 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC
Psychological Suspense Fiction Tattoo Thriller
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Critic reviews

"Against the backdrop of England's idyllic Lake District, McDermid...renders a supremely satisfying tale in which matters of heart and mind are entwined." (Booklist)

"Absorbing modern mystery....McDermid's mix of historical and literary clues with modern detection is handled with panache." (The Times, London)

"One of our most accomplished crime writers...compelling." (Glasgow Herald)

What listeners say about The Grave Tattoo

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    81
  • 4 Stars
    72
  • 3 Stars
    35
  • 2 Stars
    12
  • 1 Stars
    4
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    73
  • 4 Stars
    37
  • 3 Stars
    13
  • 2 Stars
    4
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    56
  • 4 Stars
    43
  • 3 Stars
    20
  • 2 Stars
    6
  • 1 Stars
    2

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

One needs to “stayed tuned”

Intertwining the story of”Mutiny on the Bounty” with a current murder mystery! Not easy - but well done!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Nice homage to Wordsworth!

It’s a fun go back and forth of the two stories, past and present, enjoy!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Sort of like AS Byatt's Possession,

This book pleasantly reminded me of A.S. Byatt's Possession, which I loved (and you should go get, if you haven't read it yet.) Like Byatt's book, this book plays on a literary mystery, bringing together the mystery of the mutiny on the bounty with the life of William Wordsworth and a modern-day search for documents that could make or break careers, and be worth a small fortune to the owners. I am an English professor (of American literature, however), so I love this stuff, if it's done well, and this one is.

Sometimes detective fiction seems to approach non-straight characters almost with tongs and a crinkled nose, so I especially like about this book is that gay and lesbian characters are included as a matter of course (although the central character is straight), and they are fully human.

Finally, I don't know where the other reviewer got the idea that this is Christian fiction (must have been a mis-characterization based on the name Christian Fletcher). Obviously, this is not a "Christian" text, thank heavens, and the language is suited to the areas that the people are coming from and the lives they are leading.

(And I suspect Christ hung out with a lot of people whose language was deemed crude--ironically, in fact, St. Augustine rejected Christianity for a long time simply because the Gospels were written in such a crude, street language, not the Classical Greek he was trained to respect. End of sermon!)

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

19 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Ehhh so-so

Val McDermid writes some great books that I love; this isn't one of them. I give her credit for an imaginative idea...Fletcher Christian in a British village mystery. But it's just boring. I didn't care a whit about the characters and some situations were out of character as well. I really didn't care who the killer was and the ending was ... "oh how convenient."

I don't really recommend it.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Not my favorite McDermid,But still very good.

Loved the description of the Lake district. Interesting characters and plot. Drags some, and rather predictable. Good narration but oh, what these female readers do to the male voices., is awful. I'm sure they do as well as they can. Worth a listen and a credit. Even when McDermid isn't at her best ,she's still better than most

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Entertaining

I enjoyed the book although not as much as some of McDermid’s others.

The narration was wonderful!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Casually racist

I listened to one great Val McDermid book and have been disappointed by the casual racism and classism pervasive in her books. Such a waste from an otherwise skilled writer.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Disappointing

The rated category was misleading. This is not a good representation of Christian authorship. I was very disappointed as the content which was filled with ill advised use of crude language. Often times it required turning down/off the volume or skipping ahead to avoid it, destroying the continuity of the story. Had the author kept to the plot and omitted the swearing punctuated through out, I would have rated it between 3-4 stars. This should be reclassified, off the category of Christian mystery.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

5 people found this helpful