Jonathan Riddle is a builder and an undertaker. While being an undertaker is only a small part of what he does for a living, this is what the townspeople focus on, primarily calling him "the undertaker" instead of his name. He lives with his mother, sister, and nephew Matthew, who also works for him.

Halloween is coming and the town reenacts a blazing wheel with the effigy of a man - it will be sent into the sea and is supposed to bring good luck for the next years' crops. This year DI Wycliffe and his wife witness the event with friends, and nothing more is thought of it and Wycliffe returns home.

But not for long - it seems Riddle has disappeared, and some people think instead of an effigy it was he who was strapped to the wheel and sent into the sea. When Wycliffe arrives he discovers that Sarah, Riddle's sister, didn't report him missing until Sunday although he didn't return home Friday night. Now Wycliffe finds this odd because it seems Riddle was a creature of habit and never stayed away overnight. But when he starts looking into the disappearance he must decide who had the best motive to want him gone...

I decided to read this book because it takes place at Halloween, and I like to 'read the season' as it were. However, it had nothing to do with Halloween at all save for the fact that the wheel is sent off at the beginning of the book.

First, I didn't understand why people didn't like him, merely because he was a loner growing up. Then he's not reported missing until Sunday which seemed odd considering he never stayed away overnight. You'd think they would have gone to the police some time on Saturday about it. His family also didn't seem too concerned about his being missing, which was, again, odd.

But honestly, I found this book very dry and boring. One gets no sense at all of DI Wycliffe's personality. Read Colin Watson's Flaxborough Chronicles and you have a very different person in DI Purbright. Wycliffe, on the other hand, we learn nothing at all about save for the fact that he is married. He is supposed to be intelligent (well, he does solve the case) but we are given nothing to confirm that. He doesn't appear to think much of anyone he comes in contact with, and there's no 'gleam' in his eye when he's interviewing people, you never get the idea he truly knows what he's looking for. Not a character I can see should be a detective inspector at all.

As far as the murderer goes, it was pretty easy to discover right at the beginning. While most of the characters were actually pretty lifeless - they seemed to have given up on life and just accepted that this is their lot; not a single one has any fire to them, any feeling left, any soul. Which brings me to the fact of finding the killer. Look at their lack of personality and you're given only one person who could possibly be guilty.

But the strangest thing was the ending of the book. I won't go into detail but I wasn’t very happy with it and therefore won’t be seeking out any more in this series. ( )

From Amazon:

Each year at Halloween, high on the Cornish cliffs, a life-size effigy of a man is strapped to a blazing wheel and run into the sea—a re-enactment of a hideous ancient legend of human sacrifice. So when Jonathan Riddle, a respected local builder and undertaker, disappears, it seems all too likely that his corpse has gone the way of the historic “scapegoat.” As Wycliffe begins to investigate Riddle’s family life, more and more unpleasant facts begin to emerge, until eventually he’s left with an incredible, seemingly impossible, solution.

My Thoughts:

There is a saying that "good things come in small packages". That is certainly true in this small treasure. I found these little books while seaching the library for an entirely different book. There was almost an entire shelf lined with these small offerings none which has over 220 pages....but pages packed with a top notch detective that actually does investigate as well as cast of everyday characters placed in the small village of Cornwell. This is a fascinating story showing how family life is rarely what it seems like to outsiders and the crime is not always what it appears to be.
( )

Every Halloween, a fishing village in Cornwall re-enacts a ritual whereby a stuffed dummy is tethered inside a woven-wood wheel, which is then set ablaze and rolled off the cliffs into the sea; the idea is that the dummy is the town’s “scapegoat” and carries all the sins of the villagers away with it. But one year, the ritual coincides with the disappearance of a local businessman, builder and village undertaker, Jonathan Riddle, and it is soon rumoured that the dummy in the wheel was no dummy at all. And as Superintendent Charles Wycliffe is soon to discover, there is no shortage of suspects who have reason enough to want Riddle out of the way…. This is the 8th novel in this series and was published in 1978; by this time, the casual sexism of the series is more muted, or perhaps I’ve just become more used to it. I liked the whole pagan ritual aspect of the story, and of course Wycliffe himself is an interesting character, but once again it’s the Cornish landscape (and seascape) that I love the most about this series. It’s not necessary to have read the previous books in the series to enjoy this one; in fact, this might be an excellent introduction to the series! Recommended. ( )