Just Finished Reading: The Dead of Jericho by Colin Dexter (FP: 1981) [302pp] 

Morse thought it was his lucky day. The most attractive woman at a boring party wanted to spend her time with him. Not only was she attractive but smart too, well read, well educated. But then he saw her wedding ring and she said yes, she was in fact married. Morse considered his options and decided that a relationship with a married woman was just too much work, even if his rather prickly conscience would let him even try. Weeks later he saw her again in very different circumstances – in the morgue. Detective Inspector Morse was informed that she had committed suicide and that she was pregnant. Saddened in more ways than one he decided to investigate further despite it not being his case and having occurred outside a strict interpretation of his jurisdiction. It wasn’t long before the list of questions started to outpace the answers and it wasn’t much longer before the Assistant Commissioner called him in for a ‘chat’. Morse didn’t know what surprised him more, the fact that his private investigation was known about or that it was about to become official. But now he could start answering the big questions: who was the father and did she really kill herself... 

I was (and still am) a HUGE fan of the long running TV series (33 episodes) starring John Thaw as Morse and Kevin Whatley as his long-suffering side kick Detective Sergeant Lewis. Despite that, this is my first Morse novel which is the 5th in the series. Morse is mostly the same here – irascible, short tempered, fond of his beer and classical music. In the book he also smoked (I can’t remember him smoking in the TV adaptation) and drove a Lancier rather than his iconic Jag.  

The story here is nicely complex without being TOO complicated. As usual with these things there are a number of possible suspects (and indeed crimes) with a scattering of red herrings. Both Morse and the readers are led done a garden path and I was totally suckered in, so it was quite fun when that particular rug was pulled from under my feet (honestly the smell of fish should have given it away). I won’t give anything away by laying out too much detail here, but this is a clever tale revolving around infidelity, blackmail, teenage obsession, and independent publishing. I don’t have any other Morse books (having picked this up with a bunch of other books with ‘dead’ in the title) and, despite enjoying it, don’t intend to actively look out for any more of them. It’s not that I don’t want to dig more into the original works, it’s that I have SO much more to read that I don’t really want to start yet another series. A fun read and recommended to all Morse fans who have yet to enjoy him in print.