The Riddle of the Third Mile by Colin Dexter **

Reading dates: 18 October – 16 November 2025

Inspector Morse novels in order:

1. Last Bus to Woodstock ****
2. Last Seen Wearing***
3. The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn***
4. Service of All the Dead **
5. The Dead of Jericho ***
6. The Riddle of the Third Mile **
7. The Secret of Annexe 3
8. The Wench is Dead
9. The Jewel That Was Ours
10. The Way Through the Woods*****
11. The Daughters of Cain
12. Death Is Now My Neighbour
13. The Remorseful Day****

The Riddle of the Third Mile is another poor novel in the series. I can infer, from having read the Jack Reacher novels, the Ripliad, and the Red Riding quartet, that all serialised crime fiction goes through some highs and lows, David Peace’s being the less pronounced. In The Riddle Dexter is trying a clever structuring device of a three stage plot, but the characters are confusing, the motives far-fetched and the solution to the main mystery (whose is the body found?) very obvious. The opening scene in a battlefield should be prescient and is indeed a red herring onto which too much is invested. I knew all this when I started reading these novels in order to so I look forward to coming out of this desert and starting some of the more acclaimed ones. 6 to go!

I still adore Morse, though, probably as much or more than Sherlock.

By temperament he was a loner, if only because, although never wholly content in the solitary state, he was almost invariably even more miserable in the company of others.