WYCLIFFE AND THE CYCLE OF DEATH

Another case in Cornwall for ever more introspective Chief Superintendent Wycliffe (Wycliffe and the Tangled Web, etc.), who's now called to Penzance when Matthew Glynn is found strangled in the bookshop his family has owned for decades. One of three brothers, Matthew lived with unmarried sister Sara and his son and daughter in the large house adjoining the bookshop. His promiscuous wife, Inez, had left him 17 years before; brother Maurice's wife Celia is long dead; reclusive brother Alfred, a pharmacist once in love with Inez, never married. It's a strange family in whose history Wycliffe will find the answers to his questions—and an inconclusive end to this mildly interesting but unfocused story. Burley has done better.