![]() ![]() The visit was prompted by the discovery of a bog body in the area. ![]() University professor and scholar Jane Gresham goes to the Lake District to explore a rumored Wordsworth manuscript containing a poem which may be worth millions. I always feel a bit frustrated with the slow stage setting, so I become complacent and tend to miss what becomes part of the twist at the end. ![]() This is when it becomes really difficult to leave the book alone, the story quickly unfolds and then the little twist at the end. An initial, slow stage setting, ensuring all characters are introduced and firmly established so the reader feels like they know them and their relationships, before increasing the pace for the final part. I like the way Val McDermid constructs her stories. ![]() However, she is not the only one interested in finding it and she becomes embroiled in a race to find the living ancestor of Wordsworth's maid. Jane returns to her family home to track down the missing manuscript. Her research uncovers a letter from Wordsworth's wife Mary that hints at a lost manuscript and lends credence to the story, so when a body emerges from a peat bog in her hometown that has tattoos from the South Seas, she suspects this may be Christian Fletcher. Cumbrian born, Jane Gresham is a Wordsworth scholar who has long believed in the local story that Fletcher Christian, the man who led the mutiny on the Bounty and school friend of Wordsworth, had returned to his home county of Cumbria. ![]()
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