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Wycliffe and the Four Jacks (1985)

I'm a sucker for British mysteries on tv, to the point where I even keep watching some series that I don't much like as long as they have some redeeming features. Such is the case with Wycliffe, where Jack Shepherd plays the lead and is so emotionally explosive and anti-religious that it's hard to like him. More than that, he rides his deputy, DI Doug Kersey (played by the fine Jimmy Yuill), far too hard for his every mistake, given how inappropriately personal his own reactions to cases tend to be.

This book though is based on one of the best entries in the series, pitting the mercurial Shepherd against the always great Bill Nighy, as David Cleeve, a best-selling pseudonymous novelist. Between the Cornwall setting and the interaction between the two stars, the series seemed full of promise.

The book obviously lacks this dynamic. Indeed, it justifies the criticism of Burley as a writer that the mysteries were altogether too workmanlike for the books to be considered classics. It's diverting for a few hours, but nothing more than that.

(Reviewed:15-Jan-15)

Grade: (B)

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Wycliffe and the Four Jacks (1985)

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