The Grave Tattoo - Couverture rigide

When torrential summer rains uncover a bizarrely tattooed bodyon a Lake District hillside, old wives’ tales come swirling to the surface.For centuries Lakelanders have whispered that Fletcher Christian, infamous Bountymutineer, staged the massacre on Pitcairn Island so he could return home.And there he told his story to an old friend and schoolmate, William Wordsworth,who turned it into a long narrative poem—one kept hidden lest it exposeWordsworth to the gallows for harbouring a fugitive.

Wordsworth specialist Jane Gresham, herself a native of the LakeDistrict, feels compelled to discover once and for all if the manuscript everexisted—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-oldmystery that continues to put lives on the line. Against the dramatic backdropof England’s Lake District a drama of life and death plays out, its ultimateprize a bounty worth millions.

When torrential summer rains uncover a bizarrely tattooed body on a hillside in England’s Lake District, locals are convinced it is the corpse of Fletcher Christian, infamous mutineer on the Bounty. Though history records that Christian died in a massacre on Pitcairn Island, Lakelanders have long maintained that he returned home—where his old friend and schoolmate, William Wordsworth, risked facing the gallows by harbouring the fugitive. It was rumoured that the poet had written an epic verse recounting Christian’s version of events, only to hide it away for fear its publication would result in his arrest.

For the Wordsworth scholar Jane Gresham, the missing manuscript—if indeed it ever existed—is the ultimate prize. But on her trail is someone with a more than academic interest in the 200-year-old text, someone who will kill to get their hands on a bounty worth millions.