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.
Inspector Morse: The Riddle of the Third Mile
by Colin Dexter (Macmillan, 1983); audiobook read by Samuel West (Macmillan, 2017)
The writing has an air of literature to it and some wonderfully poetic flourishes. Morse himself is a great character. Yet the mystery itself—key elements of which are artfully, rather capriciously concealed by omissions in Dexter’s omniscient narrative—doesn’t bear scrutiny.