History and Mystery Reads

Rating: 6/10

• Plot: Two young women hitchhike toward Woodstock on a rainy night; one is found dead in a pub car park, and the other won’t come forward.
• Clues: Many, often misleading, and the fun is in watching Morse chase wrong theories.
• Reveal: Ingenious but contrived, typical of Dexter’s twisty plotting.

Sylvia Kaye, a young office worker, is found murdered in the car park of a pub in Woodstock, outside Oxford. She had been hitchhiking with another woman, whose identity is unknown. Chief Inspector Morse, a bachelor who loves crosswords, beer and Wagner, investigates with Sergeant Lewis.

This is the first of thirteen Morse novels, and it introduces the character who became one of Britain’s best-loved detectives. Morse is brilliant, irritable, lonely and prone to leaping to conclusions. Lewis is steady, practical and patient. Their relationship is already the heart of the series.

Dexter, a crossword setter, constructs plots like puzzles, with red herrings, reversals and clever twists. Morse forms theory after theory, and several are wrong. The book enjoys its own complexity.

The weaknesses are dated attitudes and awkward handling of the female characters. Morse’s interest in women, including a romance with a nurse, is presented as melancholy but can seem uncomfortable. The plotting is intricate to the point of implausibility.

The 6 reflects an entertaining but uneven debut. The Morse novels improved considerably, with The Wench Is Dead and The Way Through the Woods winning Gold Daggers, and the television series gave the character depth that the first book only suggests.