2. Last Seen Wearing

Do not be fooled by the cover’s atmospheric shot of bicycles leant up against an Oxford college wall. You’ll find almost nothing of the historical/academic Oxford you’ve come to associate with the TV version of Morse in this novel. Last Seen Wearing, is Colin Dexter’s second Morse novel and, for me, it stands as a timely reminder that Dexter was intent upon exploring a different Oxford when he began to write these books. The action here takes place in the suburbs. It routinely avoids the colleges and history normally associated with Oxford, and strongly played upon in the TV adaptations. The absence of austere settings really made me question my understanding of Morse. I think I’ve come to associate the series as much with my perceived understanding of Oxford city, as I have with the character.

The novel has quite a simple premise, which Dexter effectively teases out and twists for 350 pages. There is a murder, a single murder, but it comes very late in the day and isn’t really the novel’s focus. I wasn’t the only one who found this frustrating.

“Morse stared morosely at the blotting paper. ‘It’s just not my sort of case, Lewis. I know it’s not a very nice thing to say, but I just get on better when we’ve got. body - a body that died from unnatural causes. That’s all I ask. And we haven’t got a body.”

A teenage girl has gone missing from a local school. It’s a cold case, several years old, which Morse has picked up from a colleague who’s recently died. He begins to revisit the case notes and several of the male school teachers are soon on his suspect list. His investigations take him from the middle class housing developments of suburban Oxford, to the seedy backstreets of London and a small, rural village in Wales. I have to say, I saw the solution at least a hundred pages before Morse did. Unlike, the previous novel, I felt Dexter gave the reader enough clues here to be able to solve the case themselves.

I could see Morse’s character beginning to develop in this second novel. He’s now established as an avid crossword puzzle enthusiast. He’s a big fan of drinking, (both on duty and off). He likes cars and has terrible instincts when it comes to women. Everyone he falls for seems to have criminal tendencies. You’d think his job would have taught him to be a bit more discerning, but if the TV series is anything to go by, I suspect Morse is never going to improve in this area. He’s dated a fair few murderers in his time. Lewis is also beginning to emerge as a much more developed character. There’s an element of chemistry developing between the two men and a sense that -though very different- they have a grudging respect for each others’ methods. Morse is the eccentric. Lewis the traditional plodding policeman who, Dexter would have us believe, turns his nose up at anything that doesn’t come out of a chip pan. The issue of class is intriguing here. Where the TV adaptation gives Morse upper class sensibilities, (though Endeavour suggests he’s from a working class background originally), and Lewis is painfully middle class, it’s much more difficult to place the socio-economic backgrounds of the two characters in these books. Morse certainly hasn’t shown much interest in Wagner or Chaucer yet.

Plot wise, I felt this novel was a lot more coherent than Last Bus to Woodstock. Dexter seems to be finding his literary stride. There are a few red herrings I could’ve done without - I got the sense that Dexter was still working out his plot as he wrote it and consequently included details and information that has no real bearing on the story. There’s a fair amount of flaffing at the novel’s end with several different solutions explored and ultimately tossed aside, to leave the reader with a rather unsatisfying conclusion. The journey was definitely more interesting than the destination, but often that’s the way with a book. As for Dexter’s treatment of women, the less said the better. The misogyny’s not greatly improved in this his second offering. I’m really hoping that as he moves into the 80s and 90s, political correctness and a dose of decency will catch up with him so I’m not continually reading about women reduced and objectified. Onwards and upwards.

My one sentence review of Last Seen Wearing — “Better, but still some way to go.”

*Also thought it was quite odd that Dexter’s first two novels both have titles which begin with the word “Last.” It has reassured me greatly about publishing three “The ….” titled books back to back