The Daughters of Cain

Dexter’s Chief Inspector Morse has appeared in a fine TV series which we were watching in an Islington row house next to the below-ground level kitchen, when the kitchen popped from an overheated pan. No, it turned out to be smash-and-grab, since we’d foolishly left the shutters open, my wife’s purse visible on the table with keys to the Aston Martin parked on the front garden. Except there were no keys, still in the study on the first floor (US, 2nd), since I was too worried to drive it, drove their English Ford Escort instead.
Morse on TV was not aging as he is in this book, putting his trousers on while sitting, reluctant to drive after a couple brews, planning in fact his retirement, though he continues drinking a few pints show more before going home for Glenfiddich; Morse clims, “I am the only man in Oxford who gets more sober the more he drinks”(241). Colin Dexter in this novel may also be different—can’t find the four others I read on my shelf to compare. (This I bought used for £1 in the 90's.)
This novel repeatedly notes what is NOT said or done: “what was Ellie Smith trying to tell him…or what she was trying not to tell him”(283); Morse’s boss Strange, “How’re things going, Morse?” “Progressing, sir,” Strange looked at him sourly, “You mean they’re not progressing?” (293); “Her thoughts concentrated on what she could have told him, or rather on what she could never have told him”(381); “but the thought was not translated into words”(52).

Dexter describes the narrator, himself, as a chronicler; and indeed, he refers to months, days and times often, and often to begin a chapter. But Dexter also writes with, forgive me, dexter-ity. Say, his metaphors, “the concertina’d Escort” or “had taken some of the cream from Lewis’s eclair”(273), and also his latinate words to suggest Morse’s Oxford education: dactylloscopy (fingerprint-study) , dolichocephalic (long-faced).
Much connects with my personal life, visiting Oxford over the years—my bio of Giordano Bruno in the university library, shelved in a tunnel to Radcliffe Camera—and since my sister-in-law’s finishing a Ph.D. there. She first told us the local name of Tolkien and CS Lewis’s pub, The Bird and Baby, where he drinks Burton’s Ale (188). The avenue “of St Giles forks into the Woodstock Road to the left and the Banbury Road to the right (up which our usual B&B can be found) (111). But even the mention of Father Brown, which we now watch weekly on TV, where Chesterton said the best place to conceal a corpse, a battlefield (356).
The murders in this book are victim and murderer; but is it still murder when you kill the murderer? Three women align to oppose the abuser of two of them, but almost everyone the Chief Inspector interviews lies, copiously. In one early case, Morse summarizes Mrs Wynne-Wilson, “She’s a Walter Mitty sort of woman. She lives in a world of fantasy. She tells herself so many times—tells others so many times— that she thinks they’re true. And for her they are true”(39). Residents of the U.S. in 2020 boast a president very like this Mrs.

BTW, each of the 71 chapters has a fine epigraph, ranging from local notebooks to Catullus in Latin (whom I have translated), Dickens, the Bible and Housman: "And like a skylit water stood/ The bluebells in the azure wood."(Ch.9, p44) show less

I always found Inspector Morse somewhat offputting in the TV series but in this book, where the reader is privy to his inner thoughts, he is much more likeable.

Morse and Lewis are called in to take over a murder investigation when the previous investigator has to take time off to be with his ill wife. Dr. Felix McClure, a retired Oxford don, was stabbed and died of the single wound. However, the murder weapon was not on the premises and was not found in a sweep of surrounding residences. Morse, although ill, fairly quickly decides the likely murderer is one Edward Brooks who used to be a cleaner in the same college McClure was a don. However, by the time he has enough evidence to question him, Edward has disappeared. Is Edward dead? show more If so, who killed him? And where is that murder weapon? Morse has one of his flashes of brilliance and manages to tie up the case. But alas he loses the fair maid in the bargain.

I thought this was a pretty decent murder mystery and I loved the epigrams at the start of each chapter. One especially seemed apt since I read this book on a day I was home from work due to being sick with some kind of virus: I enjoy convalescence; it is the part that makes the illness worth while. (George Bernard Shaw) p. 209 show less

In one of the best of the Inspector Morse series, author Colin Dexter juggles several intricate plot lines, keeping the reader totally absorbed in each subplot and, especially, in the lives of the characters before he deftly brings them all together in a satisfying ending.
A former Oxford professor, Dr. Felix McClure, is found stabbed to death in his flat. Inspector Morse and his faithful Watson, Sergeant Lewis, are assigned the case. The two discover a suspicious connection between McClure and a ne'er-do-well named Ted Brooks, who himself vanishes suddenly. As you'd expect from the title, the cast of suspects is almost exclusively female, and Dexter does a fantastic job of probing the passions that drive women to murder.
Interestingly show more enough, the most perplexing question is not so much whodunit as howdunit, and the solution that Dexter provides is very tricky, and very clever. You'd be hard-pressed, though, to find a writer plays more fairly with clues; all the information necessary to deduce the solution is there, albeit hidden in plain sight.
An excellent read. show less

Colin Dexter has a way with words, and the cleverness in his writing outpaced my expectations. This is the first Morse novel I've read and I expect I'll be picking up the rest in short order. I wouldn't bother if the writing were not a cut above the typical mystery fare.

The biggest incongruity between the books and the ITV serieses is that Morse smokes in the books (and the Lancia and porn in earlier books). This later book is less jarring, except the smoking, and fits in with your mental-television image of Morse. He is erudite, lovesick, a drinker, and snappy to Lewis. Ornery. This one is a good little mystery, with interesting characters. The television version makes the young Ellie a wonderful person, the old hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold trope, and she's stunningly a high class call girl. In the book she's a definite fallen woman, a daughter of Cain (and Eve) indeed, with nose rings and colored hair. Common, to use a British put-down/description. A good story set in 1990s Oxford, with curmudgeonly show more Morse and affable, put-upon Lewis chugging through another case. Good all around. show less

As a fan of the TV series starring John Thaw I had hoped to enjoy this novel more than I did. I realised after buying it that it is late in the set of novels and therefore Morse is in decline, accelerating the process by being unable to give up smoking and drinking despite having to spend a few days in hospital due to an exacerbated chest infection. The plot is rather convoluted featuring two murders, one leading on from another, and with one of the victims being so unlikeable that you end up rooting for the murderers to get away with it.

Structurally the author's erudition is on display with apposite quotations heading up each of the chapters. I found the old style of narrative where there is an omniscient author who occasionally show more intrudes very obviously into the text, together with the constant head hopping whereby we are told what every character in a scene is thinking, rather off putting. Also Morse is made rather unlikeable himself in this novel with even Lewis looking askance at him at one point. Afterwards I viewed the TV adaptation and found it had been considerably streamlined and the whole subplot of Morse's ill health and decline towards a projected retirement in a couple of years omitted. Of course there are a lot more episodes than novels so the character could not be killed off so quickly on TV. On the whole though, some of the more questionable and unconvincing parts of the novel such as Morse's reciprocated and unrequited love with the prostitute daughter of one character were well advisedly excised from the TV version with no loss as far as I was concerned. All in all, I would rate this at 3 stars. show less

There are distinct signs that Colin Dexter is getting a trifle tired of Morse: not just in the obvious references to the great detective's numbered days within the force, but also within the rather slow and plodding build up to the action.
Rather like a firework in the rain, this book threatens to fizzle out but, eventually, in the final 100 pages bursts into life to become a rather good book. Unusually, for Morse, this is not really a whodunnit but rather a 'how did they do it' and to keep the oddities flowing, Dexter writes about the little people of Oxford, for once and a domestic to boot.
Whilst not Morse at his best, still a worthwhile read.