The Grave Tattoo

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This was quite different from McDermid's usual setup as the leading characters we're not part of or related to the police force.

When a tattooed body is found half preserved in the brackish water of a peat bog just outside of Fellhead, local Wordsworth scholar Jane Gresham jumps at the chance to investigate. I loved the characters in this stand alone book (book without a sequel) and liked the combo of Tenille and Jane. excellent read - - even allowing for the annoying print layout of this book on kindle which wouldn't budge from a narrow three word column in centre of kindle page.THE GRAVE TATTOO has a very unexpected setting and environment for a crime fiction book than much of the standard offering these days. And in Wordsworth scholar Jane Gresham, McDermid has created a character whose keen intellect matches her generous heart. It is not a storyline with a few details fleshing it out because every scene is built upon with attitude that makes you feel as though you are living the story.

The first two or three chapters of this book didn't feel much like McDermid's usual style of criminal detection but as I read more I became hooked and found it hard to put down until I got to the end. McDermid] shows her extraordinary range as the story weaves between Wordsworth’s, “notes,” the rarefied atmosphere of academia, and the gritty reality of underclass London. No less than the elegant cut of the author’s prose and the nice lines of his characters, the fashionable aesthetics of “noir porn” are presented here in high style. A superb psychological thriller in which present-day murder has its roots in the eighteenth century and the mutiny on the Bounty.The action drags just a little at the midway point but picks up again quickly, and you won’t guess whodunit until the very end -- or I didn’t, anyway.