Inspector Morse

Detective Chief Inspector Endeavour Morse is a fictional character, who features in a series of thirteen detective novels by British author Colin Dexter, though he is better known for the TV series about him. He is a senior CID (Criminal Investigation Department) officer with the Thames Valley Police in Oxford, England.

Novels

It is primarily the personality of the main character that makes the Inspector Morse novels so successful. With his beautiful Jaguar car (originally a Lancia), thirst for beer, intellectual snobbery, and penchant for Wagner, he is a likeable person despite his sullen temperament.

Related Topics:
Jaguar - Lancia - Beer - Wagner

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Dexter is a fan of cryptic crosswords, and Inspector Morse is named after champion solver Sir Jeremy Morse. In every novel the surname of the killer is taken from those of winners of the weekly Azed solving competition that appears in The Observer. Morse's first name was kept a secret until the end of Death is Now My Neighbour (traditionally Morse claimed that he should be called 'Morse' or jokingly that his first name was 'Inspector'). The origin of his name is the vessel HM Bark Endeavour, as Morse's father was a Quaker (Quakers have a tradition of "virtue names") and a fan of Captain James Cook.

Related Topics:
Cryptic crossword - Jeremy Morse - Azed - The Observer - HM Bark Endeavour - Quaker - Captain James Cook

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The titles of the books are:

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• Last Bus to Woodstock, 1975
• Last Seen Wearing, 1976
• Silent World of Nicholas Quinn, 1977
• Service of All the Dead, 1979
• The Dead of Jericho, 1981
• The Riddle of the Third Mile, 1983
• The Secret of Annexe 3, 1986
• The Wench is Dead, 1989
• The Jewel That Was Ours, 1991
• The Way Through the Woods, 1992
• The Daughters of Cain, 1994
• Death is Now My Neighbour, 1996
• The Remorseful Day: The Final Inspector Morse Novel, 2000

Inspector Morse also appears in several stories in Dexter's short story collection, Morse's Greatest Mystery and Other Stories (1993, expanded edition 1994).

Related Topics:
1993 - 1994

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Dexter killed Morse in his last book, and has thus far shown no sign of resurrecting him—unlike Arthur Conan Doyle, who killed his main character only to bring him back to life. Morse dies in a hospital bed from complications of his neglected type 2 diabetes—his diabetes is mentioned repeatedly in the later books, and is one of the more realistic treatments of this disease in fiction.

Related Topics:
Arthur Conan Doyle - Type 2 diabetes

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