A mellow, realistic story

Dexter’s characters are real people. He weaves the story with lots of twists and turns. The detectives have vulnerabilities. A real page-turner.

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Pity .

It’s a pity that with an author that was as pedantic as Colin Dexter , who , was so consumed with the English language , managed to get stuck with a narrator who continually mispronounced the word suppose, it is not spelled sposed and should not be pronounced as such .

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Great mastery by Dexter

keeps you guessing throughout. excellent reader too. Will definitely listen to more Dexter and read by West

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Good characterisation

excellent narrator, provides good characterisation for both Morse and Lewis. Story line leaves you guessing till the end

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Great narration & story

A gentle and soothing crime novel that involved me throughout. I was not familiar with this particular Morse book, and it was a great discovery. Thank you, Audible.

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Hogmanay masquerade without good will

Postwar murder stories are more varied than the “Golden Age” stuff, when it’s always about inheritance (or foreigners).
The fancy dress party is, however, a recurring trope in whodunnits. (Indeed, mistaken identity and disguise is a dramatic device as old as time, from Esau and Isaac on.)
Oxford residents seem to have an attraction to jumping off church towers, and admittedly they have a wide choice, but, for heavens’ sake, there are easier and less vindictive methods of arranging that inevitable rendezvous with your Maker.
I am very fond of Max, the pathologist who has a kyphoscoliosis, who quite properly refuses to be bullied by Morse, or anyone else, into making dogmatic statements that are unwarranted. He’s more than a match for Morse, who would be likely to skive off post-mortems he ought to attend.
It’s always easy to locate these novels in time by the cars - Metro, Maestro, Mini - names recalling the local Cowley industry, before Thatcher destroyed British manufacturing.
I can’t understand Morse’s enthusiasm for blended whisky (“cooking whisky”), Bell’s is acceptable in Black Bun; he thinks Glenfiddich is great stuff - he needs to get out more!

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3 people found this helpful

Complicated story

Plot was not fully explained and new character introduced in last few minutes. who assisted in the murder. . Nonetheless a nice listen. I love Morse. The reader of the Morse books is exceptional.

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Wired story

Not happy at how the book ended. There was lots left unanswered. Story was very muddled at times.

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Don't waste a credit on this one.

This book made me realise how hard the Inspector Morse TV writers must have had to work. The writing is dreadful (not to mention racist and pathetically sexist, dinosaur territory) and even more annoyingly the plot is appallingly ill thought out and risible. Morse's and Lewis's alleged deductions are implausible and crass. If this had been a physical book I might even have hurled it at the wall. Don't waste a credit on this drivel.

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2 people found this helpful

Sexist, racist and mind numbingly dull.

I have to keep going back to re-listen as its so boring and rambling I can't help zoning out every few minutes. The sexism and racism are really hard to swallow- even 19th century male authors managed to be more enlightened. Story wise, they seem to have found the culprit but there are still 2 hours of this interminable punishment to go so god knows where this is going.

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