Inspector Morse: A Mysterious Profile

By Colin Dexter

The international-bestselling author answers readers’ questions and discusses the origins of the Oxford inspector with a penchant for classical music.

In 1975, Inspector Morse debuted, working to solve the case of a murdered hitchhiker in Colin Dexter’s Last Bus to Woodstock. The book led to a multimillion-bestselling mystery series and a television show that spawned a spinoff and a prequel. But how did the beloved DCI from Oxford come to be exactly?

In this quick read, Colin Dexter addresses some of the many questions posed to him by his readers. He reveals what motived him to break into crime writing and which authors and novels influenced him. He discusses Morse’s many traits and inner workings, as well as how he got his first Morse novel published. He also shares how he maintains a discipline with writing, how he deals with critics, and what it’s like to transform a series of novels into a television series.

Praise for the Inspector Morse Novels

“[Morse is] the most prickly, conceited, and genuinely brilliant detective since Hercule Poirot.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A masterful crime writer whom few others match.” —Publishers Weekly 

“Let those who lament the decline of the English detective story reach for Colin Dexter.” —The Guardian

“It is a delight to watch this brilliant, quirky man [Morse] deduce.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: May 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781504074421

Colin Dexter

Colin Dexter won many awards for his novels including the CWA Gold Dagger and Silver Dagger awards. In 1997 he was presented with the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for outstanding services to crime literature. Colin's thirteenth and final Inspector Morse novel, The Remorseful Day, was published in 1999. He lived in Oxford until his death in 2017.

Book preview

Inspector Morse

A Mysterious Profile

Colin Dexter

Colin Dexter

Perhaps (I hope) the most sensible way for me to write about Chief Inspector Morse is to try to answer some of the many questions which have been put to me most frequently by audiences and correspondents. Then, at least, I can believe that my answers will be focused upon things in which people seem genuinely interested.

But first, a few brief words about myself. The whole of my working life was spent in education: first, as a teacher of Latin and Greek in English grammar schools; second, with increasing deafness blighting my life, as a senior administrative officer with the Oxford Delegacy of Local Examinations, in charge of Latin, Greek, Ancient History, and English.

Well, here goes!

What emboldened you to enlist in the rather crowded ranks of the crime-writing fraternity?

It is not unknown, even in mid-summer, for the heavens to open in North Wales; and there are few things more dispiriting than to sit in a guest-house with the rain streaming in rivulets down the windows, and with offspring affirming that every other father somehow manages to locate a splendid resort, with blue skies and warm seas, for the annual family holiday. That was my situation one Saturday afternoon in August 1973. Having rather nervously asserted that we were not planning a premature return to Oxford, I shut myself up in the narrow confines of the kitchen with a biro and a pad of ruled paper—with only a very vague idea of what I was intending to do. I had already finished reading the two paperback detective stories left by previous guests, and I figured that, if I tried hard, I might possibly do almost as well in the genre myself. So for a couple of hours I tried very hard. Resulting in how many paragraphs, I cannot recall. Yet I doubt more than two or three. It was, however, that all-important start: Initium est dimidium facti (the