W. J. Burley Books

Two very different young women have been murdered within the same week. One was a nightclub singer, the other a nurse, but both were strangled in their own homes in strangely efficient, remarkably similar attacks. The press is quick to assume there's a psychopath on the loose, but Detective Chief Superintendent Wycliffe suspects the truth may be somewhat more complex. When another attack is aborted for no apparent reason, Wycliffe is certain that this is no random spate of murders. But with his superiors and the media uninterested in his theories, Wycliffe knows he will have to work alone to find the killer. As he searches for a link between the victims, his investigations take him back in timeto a school trip, an isolated hostel, and a cruel joke on a lonely student.

Third book in the long running Detective Superintendent Wycliffe series.

The bookshop owned by the Glynn family—New, Secondhand, and Rare Books: Established 1886—was old, charming, and we’ll-run. So when Matthew Glynn was discovered bludgeoned and strangled in his bookshop office, it was doubly shocking, for who could have done such a thing to one of Penzance’s most respected families? But Superintendent Wycliffe found that the Glynns, like many families, were not what they appeared to be. Between the three brothers, Alfred, Maurice, and Matthew, were feelings of bitterness and resentment rooted in old quarrels—and now Matthew was dead, and before very long yet another Glynn was to die. Wycliffe, trying to unravel the murky secrets of the past, began to suspect that Sara Glynn, the reserved sister of the warring brothers, knew more than she pretended—and he had to persuade her to tell all she knew before another murder took place.