Customer Reviews

Wycliffe and the Cycle of Death: Unabridged

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book begins brightly enough as a well-written murder mystery. As the book progresses, more and more is unveiled and more and more possibilities enter the mind. So, of course, the reader wonders what the solution will be, and eagerly awaits discovering it. "How is the author going to pick a murderer out of all this" I thought. He doesn't. The book is closed on a sort of "and we'll never know who it was" situation that ranks up there with "and it was all a dream" for end of book cop-outs. So, this book does keep you guessing until the last page, in fact, it keeps you guessing forever! Surely the whole point of a murder mystery is to wrap everything up cleverly and explain.

Here, the author WJ Burley clearly digs himself into too big a hole to get out of and has to wrap it up by saying "the police will accept that the murderer is the man who committed suicide, as dead people can't be tried, even though they don't believe it is"; hence accepting the obvious theory at the beginning of the book which the whole rest of the book was meant to counteract: he might as well have wrapped it up after 60 pages when everyone thought that was the solution already. To illustrate this point, read the blurb on the back of the book: "the murderer's identity seems obvious, but Wycliffe is not convinced". Yet it is wrapped up accepting the obvious identity!

This book is not so much a bad book as one of the most dissatisfying I have ever read. I have not read the rest of the Wycliffe series, but if they are all wrapped up in this kind of way, then I have no idea how this author has enough money to go on! Imagine what the outcry would have been if Agatha Christie had resolved a book with "we'll never know who it was". I highly dis-recommend this book, unfortunately, unless you want a murder mystery without a solution. 2 stars.

This book has been sitting in my bookshelf for several years, and for some reason I didn't read it until now. It's a standard murder mystery, but well written. I had read the other customer review here on Amazon.com before I finished the book, so I was prepared for the ending, which certainly is a disappointment. In a mystery novel, the mystery is supposed to be solved. In this book, everybody thinks the mystery is solved, except for Wycliffe, so the investigation continues, and more evidence is unearhted, making their initial theory less probably, but Wycliffe for some reason decide not to proceed with the case.

With a proper ending, this would have been a pretty good mystery novel, but it's not. You'd be better off with most other murder mysteries instead of this one. Not recommended.

Spoiler Alert: This review will give away the book - because there isn't much to give away.

There are 2 murders and 1 suicide (driven to it - by the murder is who I say did it) and yet NO one is to be tried nor anything definite decided really.

Now after all the build up - I would say that NONE of the brothers did it. It had to have been Sara - she is the one the police agree (and which we know) drove the 1 brother to suicide. And thereby leaving the last brother looking guilty for it all but without definite proof (because he didn't do any of it) but still looking totally guilty. She knew how to play on peoples weaknesses and fears. She makes him look like the guilty party, then she gives him an alibi by blaming the one she drove to kill himself - what else can the last surviving brother do but agree with her to protect himself. She showed no feelings for anyone throughout the story, just trying to make sure to be in control of everything and everyone involved from the beginning. And she felt bitter towards them all. So she didn't just go out of her way to help anyone but only for her own sake. Yet she gets away with it, otherwise it just doesn't really make sense any other way. Very disappointing. She is the only one that 2 eye witnesses say they saw, not the brothers.

Pretty much every Wycliffe mystery is outstanding. I have read a ton of mystery series, and the Wycliffe series except for a book or two is my favorite. I got very involved in this book and also was disappointed in the end that we do not get to find out who did the initial murder. We do get to find out who committed another crime to a family member years before--and that is all the satisfaction the readers get to have from this book.

I think Wycliffe didn't write himself into a corner, as suggested by a previous reviewer in 2002. I think he wanted to try something new, wanted to bring a new perspective, felt he couldn't keep writing in the same vein. In this book, not solving the mystery tells us something about Wycliffe and how he feels about the conclusion to a case like this--where he can't solve it and then must watch how it plays out in the criminal justice system, with an innocent man dead man getting the blame. The only disappointing thing is the reader doesn't even get to know who Wycliffe THINKS the murderer is. I would have liked to know that.

It is a good book, but read the whole series and then you will not be disappointed by this particular undecided outcome. And this is a good read, with all the clues leading us places that ought to be conclusive but aren't--maybe like a real murder case.