The Riddle of the Third Mile

An early Morse book, pre-TV show. So, Morse smokes, likes porn, and drives a Lancia. There is some Morse background in this one, back to his college days. (Which differs again from the TV shows, slightly.) This one was not made into an episode. For obvious reasons. Spoilers. One, Morse is wrong, as you the reader knows, though his explanation is reasonable, it is wrong. Morse does that a lot. This one has no real resolution, as every suspect and murderer ends up dead in the end. A complex read though, fun, experimentally told, I think.

There are two things that I particularly like about Dexter's Morse series: firstly, the way that the eponymous hero is aloud to grow with each book. So many of his rival, great detectives, seem to have been transported to the earth in their fully fledged form whilst Morse, like an onion, sheds his skins gradually, to reveal a deeper self.
The second thing that I really enjoy is that they are perfectly constructed whodunnits: one feels that one is sharing Morse's journey to the crime's solution and so, when it comes to the denouement, one feels that one knows what Morse is going to say: and one does until.... there is always that little twist. What makes the book even more enjoyable is that when one gets to the twist, one acknowledges show more that the clues were all there in the text. Excellent entertainment! show less

This is another cunningly constructed mystery, plenty of red herrings, so many that we lose sight of others who have disappeared, in our focus on one person. Eventually Morse gets help from a surprising quarter, which throws a very different light on his investigation.

These books are superbly read by Samuel West, and there's a literary quality to them that is rarely found in crime fiction.

2. The Riddle of the Third Mile by Colin Dexter. The sixth of the Inspector Morse series. When a body, with all the identifiable parts missing, is pulled from the Oxford Canal, Morse and Sergeant Lewis are sent to figure out who it is and who put it there. The investigation takes them from the offices of Oxford University to the most seedy London clubs, and along the way they discover the pockets of the university where bitterness had been stewing for years.
This investigation is atmospheric, sometimes complicated, and also fun due to Morse's extreme crabbiness and arrogance.

well you can't reveal much about the plot, it's a who-Dunnit. I enjoy Dexter's spare prose and this is a good example of the grumpy Morse at work.

I'm tiring of the Inspector Morse series as it gets more and more convoluted, with the focus on dramatic twists as opposed to real suspense. This one about murderous Oxford professors turning on one another was pretty dull. Plus it lacks the character development of Morse and Lewis found in previous books. I think I'll give up on this series, or maybe read one more. Who knows?

The Riddle Of The Third Mile (1983) (Insp. Morse #6) by Colin Dexter. A young man dies in WWII in a tank fire during a fierce battle. His brother, himself wounded, tries to save him but is ordered away by an officer, himself wounded.
Years later that officer, Browne-Smith, now a Don at Lonsdale College, Oxford, goes off on a jaunt into the seedier side of London and is not seen again. A torso is found several days later in a nearby river and Morse and Lewis are on the case.
This is a story of revenge, jealousy to a degree, and unspoken hatred. Misconceptions abound amount the victims and their cadre, and of course Morse has his own misconceptions, But in all he does brilliantly. Even as the bodies pile up, and he deals with a killer show more toothache, he manages to steer a course that, while not true, is good enough.
There are many facets that can prick those who must work and live together, as in the case of a college full of Dons (Professors to us yanks). And academics can be just as mean-spirited and spiteful, or even far moreso, than your average set of workers.
In a way this, like many a Morse novel, feels claustrophobic to me. All pent up within the ivied walls as it were, the regular world passing them by as minor differences escalate rapidly into issues of life and death. Almost feels like being quarantined during a pandemic. But how would we know that? show less