Service of All the Dead
by Colin Dexter (Macmillan, 1979); audiobook read by Samuel West (Macmillan, 2017)
Dexter begins with a lengthy series of inciting incidents to which readers are privy but Morse isn’t. Morse then solves the mystery by mooning about irritably, his moribund thoughts kept equally inscrutable. Sans John Thaw’s embodiment, the whole effect is rather dismal.