The Remorseful Day

Wycliffe's Wild-Goose Chase by W.J. Burley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While randomly buying books there always remains a risk of paying for a book, which is not worth the money spent. But then there is always a chance of stumbling upon a book or a series which turns out to be generally unknown but very enjoyable, making every penny spent worth it. This book fell into the latter category. I had never heard of either the series or W.J. Burley, but what I read would easily fall into the sphere of a well plotted British gentleman police procedural.

Aptly named, the book starts when Wycliffe stumbles upon a revolver while taking his morning walk. Following this discovery he discovers that the gun is a part of a burglary which took place earlier, the loot consisting mostly of antiques. Within a few days of this discovery, the local antique dealer turns up dead while his brother and his yacht goes missing. Wycliffe, not sure whether the gun is connected with the crime, or whether at all the death is a murder, or was it a suicide, starts his investigation involving the crime and burglaries of antiques.

The book is slow. But it has its own charm. Somehow I felt had it been blisteringly fast paced, the plot, the ambience of the book couldn’t have been justified. This was a classic British whodunnit, which required clues, detection and a sedate pace which would maintain its charm of being an easy and interesting work of crime writing without turning it into slow paced and boring.


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