Synopsis:
A superb psychological thriller in which present-day murder has its roots in the eighteenth century and the mutiny on the Bounty. When torrential summer rains uncover a bizarrely tattooed body on a Lake District hillside, old wives’ tales also come swirling to the surface.
For centuries Lakelanders have whispered that Fletcher Christian staged the massacre on Pitcairn so that 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 – a poem that remained hidden lest it expose Wordsworth to the gallows for harbouring 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. Against the dramatic backdrop of England’s Lake District a drama of life and death plays out, its ultimate prize a bounty worth millions.
Series: Stand-alone thriller
Publisher: Harper Collins
Literary agent: Gregory & Company
Publishing date UK: 01 February 2006
— Allan Laing, Glasgow Herald
— Daily Telegraph
— Barry Forshaw, Express
— Patricia Craig, Times Literary Supplement
— Jane Jakeman, Scotland on Sunday
— Maxim Jakubowski, Guardian
— Daily Mail
— Glasgow Herald
A superb psychological thriller in which present-day murder has its roots in the eighteenth century and the mutiny on the Bounty.
(June 29, 2008)