Enjoyable but fairly light mystery thriller. A teenage girl school trip turns into a bullying incident with repercussions years later. Simple for mr wycliffe to solve and no real tension in the tale but good none the less. ( )

Boring, it was too easy to work out who the murderer was and why. ( )

In" Wycliffe and the School Bullies," by W.J. Burley, we meet Jane, a young girl who participates in a summer camp for girls from various schools in her area. There, her sheltered life and keenness to do the “right” thing cause her to be the target of bullies, who themselves are protected by the female teacher in charge of the summer camp. Fast forward nine years, and an unknown stalker is strangling young women in the area, killing two and leaving another injured and apparently left alive because the murderer had chosen the “wrong” victim. Can Detective Superintendent Wycliffe find a link between the women to help explain how they came to be so targeted, and will be he able to do so before the next victim is found?.... In this novel the reader knows who the killer is from very early on, but it takes time to figure out the person’s motivation and methods. This was written in the mid-1970s, and contains a certain amount of inherent sexism in the depiction of women always as “girls,” etc., but it’s actually quite a bit less sexist than some of the earlier novels in the series. As always, I enjoy Wycliffe’s thinking process and deliberative nature, although there was a bit less of the flavour of Cornwall in this particular outing; nevertheless, recommended! ( )

This book follows one of Burley's standard formats, with a flashback prologue showing the reader a motive for a crime, then showing the crime that first brings Wycliffe into the story, and following the process of solving the crime. Here the motive is the vicious bullying of a young teenager on a school trip, and the crime is the separate murders of two young women. At first there appears to be no link between the two murders, but as Wycliffe digs into their past, he starts to find connections. Connections that lead him to a motive, other potential victims, and a race to find the killer. It's not difficult for the reader to work out who the killer is, but the point of the story is to follow along as Wycliffe pieces together the fragments of information that might lead him to the next victim before the killer. It's an entertaining read with some interesting character sketches, although be warned that the prologue could be triggery for bullying victims. ( )

Wycliffe and the School Bullies (Wycliffe Series) by W. J. Burley (2007)