Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Ishmael, the narrator, finds himself sharing a bed at the whalers' inn with a Polynesian harpooneer whose face and body are covered with tattoos. These are the work of a "seer of his island" who has "written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth". Unfortunately, it is illegible to everyone, including Queequeg himself.
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
When a mysterious sea captain arrives at the Admiral Benbow inn, his past, and the adventures to come, are signalled in the tattoos on his arm. "'Here's luck,' 'A fair wind,' and 'Billy Bones his fancy,' were very neatly and clearly executed on the forearm; and up near the shoulder there was a sketch of a gallows and a man hanging from it – done, as I thought, with great spirit". "Prophetic", says Dr Livesey, and indeed they are ...
"The Red-Headed League" by Arthur Conan Doyle
Mr Jabez Wilson arrives at Holmes's apartment to have his history rapidly decoded. "The obvious facts," the great detective announces, are that "he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China." The last of these, he tells the amazed client, is deducible from "the fish which you have tattooed above your right wrist". "I have made a small study of tattoo marks".
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
The narrator of Bradbury's collection of sci-fi tales meets a mysterious wanderer whose body is covered with strange tattoos. He is a traveller from the future, and each of the tattoos comes to life to illustrate one of the (mostly ominous) stories in the book.
"Blackie the Electric Rembrandt" by Thom Gunn
A tattoo poem. "We watch through the shop-front while / Blackie draws stars." Gunn's lyric follows the delicate etching of stars in "a blue thick cluster" on a boy's "virginal arm". "Now he is starlike".
Papillon by Henri Charrière
Initially called a memoir, but now seen as a novel "based on" the author's life, this account of the narrator's wrongful imprisonment on Devil's Island, and his eventual escape, takes its title from a tattoo. "Papillon" has a swallowtail butterfly tattooed on his chest – an ineradicable symbol of life and beauty?
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
Though the serial killer – and penpal of Hannibal Lecter – is hard to track down, he is not exactly concealed. Possessed by a spirit that he calls "the Dragon", he has a great red dragon (based on a design by William Blake) tattooed on his back. However, Reba, the women who befriends him, is blind, so no giveaway.
A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
At the heart of this children's roman fleuve, featuring the three Baudelaire orphans, is the secret organisation VFD (the letters are given different meanings in each of the individual volumes). It has good and malign members, all of whom have a tattoo of an eye on their left ankles. As an ex-member Count Olaf (the main baddie) has such a tattoo.
The Grave Tattoo by Val McDermid
Tattoos are often clues. In this murder mystery, a well-preserved corpse covered with tattoos is found in a bog in the Lake District, where it has been buried for many years. The tattoos lead us to the South Seas, and a plot that connects the mutiny on the Bounty to the life of William Wordsworth.
The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall
The protagonist of Hall's novel is Cy Parks, a tattooist who begins his training in Morecambe Bay. Cy eventually sets himself up in Coney Island as "the Electric Michelangelo", allowing the novelist much rumination on the human body.
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