Last bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter ****
Reading dates: 24 – 31 August 2025
Inspector Morse novels in order:
- Last Bus to Woodstock ****
- Last Seen Wearing
- The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn***
- Service of All the Dead
- The Dead of Jericho ***
- The Riddle of the Third Mile
- The Secret of Annexe 3
- The Wench is Dead
- The Jewel That Was Ours
- The Way Through the Woods*****
- The Daughters of Cain
- Death Is Now My Neighbour
- The Remorseful Day****
This is the first Inspector Morse novel, which I have heard so much about as I have delved into the series. It lived to the hype and I very much enjoyed revisiting Oxford from the south Italian landscape (Naples, Ischia, Sorrento, Rome) I was in.
Many of Morse’s character traits are here: the beer allowing him to think, his pattern recognition, his ill-humour, his personal involvement and cost…
In addition, the solution to this very gruesome mystery (rape, murder, nechrophilia) is as spectacular as can be and is reminiscent of Conan Doyle (the woman). It is not as good as The Way Through the Woods, probably because by then, Dexter had developed a strong and unique style (the epigraphs!).
And please let it not be forgotten that I am Morse of the Detective, as Dickens would have said. Oh yes, a detective. A detective has a sensibility towards crime—he feels it; he must feel it before he can detect it.
What’s the matter, Sarge?’ Constable Dickson was eating again.
‘That bloody man Morse—that’s what’s the matter,’ muttered Lewis, setting down his cup with such vigour that half the contents slopped messily into the saucer.
‘I see you like your coffee half and half, Sarge,’ said Dickson. ‘Half in the cup and half in the saucer.’ He was highly amused.
The confident head of the murder inquiry, if ever invited to take his eight discs to a desert island, would have answered ‘Committees’ to the inevitable question about what he would be most glad to have got away from.
