Wycliffe and the Dunes Mystery - Hardcover

Burley, W. J.

3.83

210 ratings by Goodreads

9780312111007: Wycliffe and the Dunes Mystery

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312111002 ISBN 13: 9780312111007

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1994

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Cochran Wilder, only son of crimebashing MP Royston Wilder, is missing on a walking holiday in Cornwall. He was last seen on Saturday evening, on the North Cornwall coastal path between Gwithian and Hayle.... Cochran was recently discharged from a psychiatric hospital where he had been detained under a court order following convictions on a number of charges including theft and indecent assault....
Chief Deputy Superintendent Wycliffe recalls all too well the considerable ruckus that Royston Wilder created fifteen years ago when his son disappeared for the first time. But when a dog accidentally unearths Cochran Wilder's body, Wycliffe is stumped over where to begin.
As the pieces of the puzzle slowly fit together to point to six prominent community members and one wild weekend they spent fifteen years ago, Wycliffe is forced to proceed carefully. All this changes when he himself gets assaulted and a suspicious landlord is murdered, plunging Wycliffe into a race to find the killer before the killer finds him.
Wycliffe, one of the best established detectives in crime fiction, is in excellent form in the latest intelligent, atmospheric mystery that will delight all of W.J. Burley's many fans.

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About the Author:

W.J. Burley lived near Newquay in Cornwall, and was a schoolmaster until he retired to concentrate on his writing. His many Wycliffe novels were extremely popular and were adapted for a highly successful TV series starring Jack Shepherd. W.J. Burley died in 2002.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Chief Superintendent Charles Wycliffe (Wycliffe and the Last Rites, 1993, etc.) investigates the 15-year-old death of Cochran Wilder, black-sheep son of a member of Parliament, whose skeletonized body has been uncovered in the sand dunes of a Cornwall beach by a violent storm. Six teenagers spent an unauthorized weekend at a nearby beach house when Wilder disappeared; now in their 30s, all still living in the St. Ives area, they're questioned at length by Wycliffe and sidekick Kersey. After the corpse's discovery hits the news, some members of the group--and, strangely enough, the police--receive an anonymous, vaguely threatening postcard. A suicide and a murder (of reclusive eccentric Henry Badger, uncle of one of the weekenders) add up to tough going for Wycliffe, whose intuitive powers are at low ebb in this outing. Intriguing at the outset, the story begins to sag as the author struggles to integrate the old killing and the new, and to animate his rather dreary characters. A workmanlike but drab and sometimes clumsy addition to Burley's series of procedurals in the British tradition. -- Copyright �1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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