Customer Reviews

Death Is Now My Neighbour

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I took a long time to get to the point. A little tedious at times.

According to a young friend from Exeter, England, the title theme music provides the Inspector's first name....keyed out in Morse Code. If you are, as am I, not proficient in that art, you may care to read this piece for no other reason than to find the christening link. However, once committed you may find yourself giving the tome a double reading: once to follow a path wound through a traumatized village populace infused with fear and suspicious neighbors; and then through the pages once again to look sharp for the subtle moment of the Great Unveiling! Morse himself believes the name uncomfortable and awful, so he basically never places the moniker into public play. His Quaker Mum had her reasons....reasons which a curmudgeon like Morse would also find "uncomfortable". If ever you endeavor to undertake this challenge, you'll not be left wondering any longer, and entertained in the process. By the way, the name is actually listed somewhere in this review, as well. See how innocuous it may prove to be! Enjoy... and good sleuthing to you!

In fact, what we've come to expect from Colin Dexter. His Morse series is a reader's dream! Dexter pens a great story, and the mysteries in these stories are also very good - complex and difficult to solve. As much as I enjoyed the televesion programs, reading the books has been a delight! Morse is just as brilliant as John Thaw portrayed him, but he is something more. He's much more vulnerable, mercurial, quixotic and yes, more eccentric. He drinks more and lives larger than he appears on TV, and these have an effect on his health. In this book, we see a vulnerable Morse battling his mortality while he tries to solve a complex case. He wins the battle this time, but we know that the next book will be his last and that makes reading this book a bitter-sweet experience. Read this series! It should not be missed!