Colin Dexter. The Riddle of the Third Mile (1983) & The Wench is Dead (1989)

     Colin Dexter. The Riddle of the Third Mile (1983) Morse must find out whose body was fished out of the canal at Thrupp. At first he thinks it’s a missing Don, but in the end it was the Master of the college. An early Morse, and it displays Dexter’s weakness for the “little did he know” ploy, which becomes more than somewhat irritating. Otherwise, a very workmanlike job. ** (2008)
Update 2013: I reread this book, didn’t change my opinion of it, see the longer review posted 5 October.
     Colin Dexter. The Wench is Dead (1989) Morse, confined to hospital because his bad habits have produced an ulcer, reads a little book, written by a fellow patient who died the first night of Morse’s stay. It tells of a murder perpetrated in 1859, and Morse doesn’t like the feel of the case. He sends Lewis and the daughter of another patient (she works at the Bodleian) to find more information, and works out that the murdered woman was someone else entirely. Satisfactory case, well told, with perhaps too much made of Morse’s inexplicable attraction for the opposite sex. **½ (2008)
Having reread these two books by Colin Dexter, I realise why I haven’t read many more of them. The TV series is much better done. Dexter’s real forte was character, and Morse’s character in particular, which the video producers enlarged, and which John Thaw interpreted so well. Another case of fair-to-middling books providing material for first class movies. However, I shall read the other volumes I’ve collected, I just shan’t keep them.