Wycliffe and the Winsor Blue Book

A picture might be better than a thousand words, but W.J. Burley can paint a picture with a very few of them.

Although the Wycliffe books are set in Modern Britain (the first in the series was published in the late 1960's and the last in the early 2000's, each being set squarely in the publication year with Wycliffe and his family ageing not one jot even as, bizarrely, his junior officers age, get promoted, and retire around him) the tone of them belongs to a different era. Forensics are called in and police procedure carried through but what matters most is Wycliffe's hunches. It's a familiar formula for mystery novels and one which has been proven to work; it does, after all, allow the reader to more easily relate to the protagonist as they usually share the same revelations - even if they are a few pages ahead of the detective himself.

This particular Wycliffe story is set in the Falmouth art world (never as famous a set as Newlyn or St. Ives) and follows Burley exploring ideas about obsession and emotional development in a sins of the fathers context.

Painting a picture with so few words? Burley was a master of characterisation. For me though, it's always nice to visit my home country when I read his books, so that may sway my judgement.