Sat 18 Jul 2015
COLIN DEXTER – Last Bus to Woodstock. Macmillan, UK, hardcover, 1975. Pan, UK, paperback, 1977. St. Martin’s, US, hardcover, 1975. Bantam, US, paperback, 1988. Many later reprint editions, in both hardcover and soft. TV movie: ITV/PBS, 1988.
I’m not sure if I was able to come up with the earliest paperback edition to appear in the US, but if I’m correct, it wasn’t until the TV series began that Bantam published one in this country. If so, and I’m not entirely surethat it is, I think it may well be a case of US publishers thinking that the Inspector Morse books may have been too “British” to be successful over here.
It what follows I am going to be, I’m sorry to say, rather negative about this book, and to explain why, or to attempt to do so, I’m going to have to say things that you may easily find me giving away too much about the ending — or in other words, whodunit.
Back in 1975 I was given a copy of the first US edition to review, and I gave up after no more than a chapter. I don’t remember exactly why. It just didn’t appeal to me. A first novel by an unknown British writer? Except for Agatha Christie and a handful others, Ngaio Marsh for one, back then I wasn’t much interested in British detective fiction. I think I’ll go on read something else, thank you.
This time around, knowing the success the Morse books have gotten since then, I made it all the way through, but not happily. The case begins with a girl’s body being found in the courtyard of a pub somewhere in the general vicinity of Oxford. Because she was partially undressed, it is assumed it was also a case of rape.
And therein lies the first problem. It is assumed she was raped, but Morse and his new associate, Sergeant Lewis, do no more than assume, and fairly soon it is taken as fact. Neither Morse nor Lewis are interested in forensics, even what was the state of the art in 1975. No fingerprints, no close examination of the body, no anything. Eventually reports are referred to, but nothing of importance is relayed to the reader.
The whole investigation, in fact, is a muddle. Morse works on intuition, instinct, guesswork and lechery, not necessarily in that order. One does not get the impression that Morse (or his author) was ever in a police station. He has a good name in the department, but damned if I know why.
And here comes the crux of the matter. After meeting the roommate of one of the suspects, he falls immediately in lust with her, and for some reason, she for him. The “romance” that follows — she is already engaged to another — is straight out of the world of fantasy. He daydreams about her constantly, and she about him. (I also do not like the constantly shifting viewpoints from which the story is told. In the right hands, the story of a police investigation could be told this way, but this time around, it simply adds to the clutter.)
And Dexter depends on clutter to hide the killer’s identity, not that he succeeds. I knew who the killer was going to be as should as he/she appeared on stage, and I’m sure you will, too. It takes nine pages of solid type for Morse to expound upon the solution, however, most of which is based on facts that either the reader didn’t know about before, or facts that should have come up for discussion between Morse and Lewis long before page 195, if anything like a proper police investigation had been done.
My rating: Not Very Good. Given how many other works of detective fiction there are in the world to read, it’s not very likely I’ll give another adventure of Inspector Morse a try. And do you know what rankles the most? That the story takes place in around the Oxford area, and you’d almost never know it. It could’ve taken place almost anywhere in suburban, not big city England. What a waste of potential.
July 18th, 2015 at 11:03 pm
I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s had trouble getting into the Morse books. I’ve managed to read about three, but it was a real slog to get through them. I actually think this is a case where the tv adaptations are better, in part because they are able to cut through a lot of the “clutter” you mentioned.
July 19th, 2015 at 12:03 am
OK, that makes two of us, Deb. Thanks! You don’t know how long I hesitated in posting this review, just in case I was the only one. I know there are plenty of people who do like the books.
I have at least one season of INSPECTOR MORSE on DVD, maybe even the complete set. I think I will try watching the episode based on this first novel, just to compare.
July 19th, 2015 at 5:56 am
The series improves, I think. Try the “armchair detective” book, THE WENCH IS DEAD.
July 19th, 2015 at 8:58 am
Thanks for the suggestion, Jeff. I guess one should never say never.
I have been looking at reviews of this book on Goodreads and Amazon, and even those who liked the book say it is not typical of the series.
There are a sizable numberwho did not like the book. Many of those are women who perceive Morse as sexist, but they are admonished by others who say Morse’s attitudes toward women are typical of the times.
Others — a small minority — agree with me in terms of slipshod police work and an solution to the case that is seen as too long and intricate and unfair to the reader. I’d add obvious since I had a good sense of what trick Dexter had up his sleeve from very early on — but only a sense, since he deliberately avoided having Morse have thoughts in that direction.
July 19th, 2015 at 7:51 pm
This is the only Morse novel I’ve read.
I thought it was terrible too.
Maybe some of the later ones are better. Who knows?
And yes, I agree with these women readers that this book is offensively sexist.
July 20th, 2015 at 6:34 pm
Morse was in print here in paperback well before the series, this one included, but it’s not the best.
While the university and its colleges figure in the books, they never really captured the Oxford I knew, though in any college town Townes and students experience different worlds. At his best Dexter is well worth it, but I personally found Morse a sullen jerk in most books.
July 20th, 2015 at 8:43 pm
I’d have sworn this particular one had been published in paperback before the TV series came along, but I’ve done a lot of searching and I haven’t found anything earlier than the Bantam edition from 1988. There were several earlier Pan editions in softcover, but of course they’re from the UK.
Checking other Morse’s, Service of All the Dead was published by Dell/Murder Ink in 1982, but nothing else shows up in US paperback until 1988 or so.
July 20th, 2015 at 8:57 pm
I didn’t find Morse sullen per se in this one, mercurial perhaps, and crabby at times. I looked up “irascible” online and found that irritable, quick-tempered, short-tempered, hot-tempered, testy, touchy, tetchy, edgy, crabby, petulant, waspish, dyspeptic, and snappish seemed to fit, but not all the time.
As for being a jerk, I know Sergeant Lewis thought so, several times over.
July 21st, 2015 at 10:18 pm
I never could see Morse’s genius or his strange appeal to women in the books. He seemed a thoroughly unpleasant type who didn’t like much of anyone, but minus the perverse charm of Nero Wolfe or Andy Dalziel.
I enjoyed some of the books, but Morse just kept me at arms length in print and on screen. In the end I could not justify spending that much time with someone that unpleasant just because he had good taste in music and the arts.
February 11th, 2018 at 2:57 pm
I think you have been grossly unfair with the book – it’s very of the 1970’s, the time when it was written and yes Morse is not the fully realised character he becomes in later books, but I do think there’s a damn good, well written mystery within these pages. I enjoyed it anyway.
February 11th, 2018 at 3:15 pm
And that’s all that matters!
PS. I have been thinking of reading one of the later books in the series, but so far just haven’t gotten to it.