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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Real Story of the Oxford Canalboat Murder,
By Notnadia (Currently upstairs.) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Wench Is Dead (Inspector Morse) (Paperback)
A decrepit Victorian canalboat staffed by drunken louts...
An impoverished, mercurial young woman traveling across England to meet up with her husband and begin a new life... The brutal homicide of this same woman in the dark of night... The recovery of her body in a canal outside Oxford, and the morbid discovery that she has been raped, beaten, intentionally drowned... About a decade ago I saw this impressively moody tale on PBS's Mystery! and thought it was a great story with a gigantic twist ending, so I resolved that one day I'd read the novel on which the superb plot was based. On a mundane Saturday last year "one day" came. Trouble is, as has often been the case through the years, reading the original novel behind the TV series handed me a letdown. Colin Dexter's idea of the truth behind a sensational nineteenth-century murder trial and how Morse arrives at that truth are every bit as wow-inducing in written form as they were on the small screen, the trouble is eighty-percent of this sloooow-moving book seemed to step away from the case at hand and concern itself with Morse's hospital stay and the unglamorous hows and whys of medical procedures best left to the imagination. Flashing back to the mid-1800's but set in 1980's Britain where the bedridden Morse's sudden fascination with the murder of a canalboat passenger provides a distraction during an unwelcome confinement, The Wench Is Dead tells of the trial of the once-famous murder victim's alleged killers, and the hanging of two of the three men convicted of the crime. Dexter's book sees the past drudged up and laid bare, takes Morse across sites barely remembered in dusty history books, and finally concludes with a disinterment inside a moss-shrouded Irish graveyard. All of this is undertaken in Morse's quest to get to the facts of what was once, long ago, the most headline-making killing in the land. Not a bad book but greatly inferior to its televised version. Be forewarned The Wench Is Dead is deliberate, meandering, and occasionally frustrating, but Mr. Dexter has fashioned one of the most imaginative surprise endings of any book I've ever read: and shame on anybody who gives that satisfying ending away!
5.0 out of 5 stars
Vintage Morse!,
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Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Wench is Dead (Inspector Morse) (Kindle Edition)
This story is on of the greats by Colin Dexter and Morse is at his cantankerous best. In some ways it is a very cold case with great twists and turns with humour and inspired insights. My favourite Morse story!
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