Wycliffe and the Redhead by
W.J. Burley
pbk out July 98
(Corgi)
at £4.99
This is the twenty-first Wycliffe novel. Now that the Superintendent has also sleuthed his way through four television series, he is a force to be reckoned with in the landscape of crime fiction.
A fight in a hotel lavatory leaves a man dead, George Barker is convicted of manslaughter, mainly on the evidence of Simon Meagor, antiquarian bookseller, failed husband and failed father. Barker protests his innocence and, on his release, commits suicide. So why should Barker’s daughter Morwenna want to work in Meagor’s Falmouth bookshop?
Morwenna is an attractive and formidable redhead with a habit of taking control of other’s lives. Meagor is easy game. She soon wangles not only a job but a room in his flat above the shop. Not that he likes her, any more than she likes him. And then she disappears, leaving the finger of suspicion pointing at Meagor. Both as a customer and as a policeman, Wycliffe is soon involved in the case, drawn more and more deeply into a complex series of motives, manipulations and murders.
Character, rather than plot, is Burley’s interest. The self-deprecating Wycliffe - civilized, intelligent and with oddly low self-esteem - is the sort of superintendent who gives the CID a good name. Burley’s sombre and quietly superior Cornish novels are a reliable pleasure - and his latest is no exception.
(
Andrew Taylor
- author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series)
Wycliffe and the Redhead by
W.J. Burley