by Colin Dexter, 1976
I love Inspector Morse mysteries. I miss them when I’ve finished because Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis are so likable, so human, and I just want to be with them. They take me to England and back to a time before much technology, except for color TVs. Morse consults maps, phone books, a rolodex (a new invention in this book), and when he wants to know what time it is, he turns on the radio:
Morse, newly woken and surprisingly refreshed, switched over to Radio Three; and thence to Radio Oxford. But none of the channels seemed anxious to inform him of the time of day, and he turned back to Radio Four…
When the radio stations didn’t tell him the time soon enough, he “got out of bed, pulled on his clothes, walked downstairs and dialled the speaking clock.”
Morse is quite a drinker even though he doesn’t think he is. He commonly has a few pints at a pub, a few gin and tonics or whiskeys at someone’s home while he’s questioning them, and then a nightcap when he gets home. Sometimes, he decides to abstain from drinking for a day but he’s usually forgotten that by 11:00 a.m. He also loves opera and women.
Morse and his Sergeant Lewis are an odd couple. Morse depends on Lewis and doesn’t want to solve a crime without him. He needs him as his sounding board and his right-hand man. He lets Lewis play at being a detective. They are opposites, though, with Lewis being methodical, serious, and detail-oriented; and Morse being impulsive, scatterbrained, and flighty. They are trying to solve the disappearance two years ago of a 17-year old school girl, Valerie Taylor. Morse thinks she is dead even though her parents recently received a letter from her in which she says she is alright. He has 4 suspects and about that many theories for her murder, but each one ends up being wrong. Valerie’s step-dad works at the dump and is a kindly man but may have had a motive. Valerie’s sexy mom is a gambler (she plays Bingo every night) and a drinker. Mr. Phillipson, the headmaster of the school, had a brief fling with Valerie and a description of that is how the book opens. Mr. Acum is Valerie’s French teacher at the school.
Here’s how he describes gambling at the beginning of Chapter 21:
The urge to gamble is so universal, so deeply embedded in unregenerate human nature that from the earliest days the philosophers and moralists have assumed it to be evil. Cupiditas, the Romans called it – the longing for the things of this world, the naked, shameless greed for gain. It is the cause, perhaps, of all our troubles. Yet how easy it remains to understand the burning envy, felt by those possessing little, for those endowed with goods aplenty. And gambling? Why, gambling offers to the poor the shining chance of something got for nothing.
During the middle of their investigation on the disappearance of Valerie, Baines, the 2nd headmaster of the school, is found murdered in his home with a huge knife in his back. Turns out everyone hated him because he knew all their secrets and was blackmailing them. Morse comes up with plausible theories that each of these people could have murdered Valerie, but each one goes out the window upon further investigation. In the end, he discovers that one of his theories is correct and that Valerie Taylor is alive and well, and she is the one who killed Mr. Baines. However, Colin Dexter doesn’t really spell that out; you have to surmise it. I was disappointed that he didn’t spell it all out for me because I really don’t know exactly why she killed Baines. But it was still an entertaining book.