Tags
Book Review, Colin Dexter, Crime Fiction, Inspector Morse, Last Bus to Woodstock, Police Procedural
The first Morse and Lewis vehicle: Nothing to do with Joni Mitchell!
I have never read any of this series, and only ever caught one or two episodes of the TV series (though I might now watch as comparison, at some point), so it was interesting to come purely to the book. Where I found things to enjoy, and some things, not so much
The not so much can be encapsulated in a following quote. The crime to be unravelled is the rape and murder of a young woman, whose body is discovered in a car park. Inspector Morse is leading the investigation, and at one point, trying to disentangle events and clarify the identity of the murderer says to Sergeant Lewis:
Raping isn’t easy they tell me if the young lady isn’t too willing
Now I have no idea, given that this is the first in the series, whether this reflects the author’s belief at the time of writing (initially published in 1975), police thinking at the time, or Morse’s own erroneous belief, and whether this is something which will further develop. The statement is presented really without comment on it.
One of the things I did like very much was the absence of much gratuitous and violent sexual detail. Whilst I don’t think that a statement as above would get by without some character challenging or commenting on that statement, or authorial distance from it being obvious, something negative which has happened in intervening years in crime fiction is a lurid, titillating approach to sex and violence being wreaked upon women, the serial killer on the loose fiction genre. Graphic description seems commonplace, and is constantly ratchetted up. Dexter focuses here far less on indulging a kind of voyeuristic prurience, and far more on the more mainstream reasons why someone might be driven to murder.
Something else I liked enormously, is of course that this is indeed a novel of relationship and character, as much as police procedural, and it is easy to see why this did indeed make for an ongoing series of books, and of course, that TV series. Here is book 1 is already a wonderfully layered relationship getting going between Morse and Lewis, between someone who seems absolutely settled as a moral touchstone, and someone who perhaps struggles more with the challenges of what it means to be human, and in relationship with others.
And, (hurrah) shot through the grim business of dealing with crime on a daily basis, is of course the necessary leaven on humour. Sometimes this is given by characters, who have their own flashes of humour, and sometimes it is Dexter himself:
..studio 2 in Walton Street was presenting a double sexploitation bill whose titles were calculated to titillate even the most jaded appetite. The first, 20.0-3.05 p.m. was Danish Blue (not, judging from the mounds of female flesh that burst their bounds in the stills outside, a film about the manufacturing of cheese)
not to mention the following little gem:
the police car parked itself, with no objection from porters, orderlies or traffic wardens, on a broad stretch of concrete marked ‘Ambulances Only’. A policeman’s parking lot was sometimes not an unhappy one
Such lightly thrown wordplay as the last is likely to see me wanting to go further with this series. Yes, there is some slightly clunky writing, particularly in dialogue (as I think my first quote also shows) but The Last Bus to Woodstock kept me hooked and interested.
However……it is immediately obvious that there are remarkable differences between 
book and TV adaptation. Not least of which is the age differential between the two central characters. Morse is first introduced to us as a lightly built, dark-haired man. Various other descriptors suggest a younger man, not to mention one who wears a degree of testosterone on his sleeves!
Last Bus to Woodstock Amazon UK
Last Bus to Woodstock Amazon USA
I was a big fan of this series and read all the books and watched many of the episodes on TV too although I have to confess I have no memory at all of that first quote!
I expect I shall slowly work my way through the series of books, and THEN watch the series. I’m interested (from reading some of the reviews of this book from those to came to it from the series, to find that some have been quite surprised at how much of a lech Morse is. And the girl in Woodstock is quite young too. I wonder, was Morse quite lecherous in the series – there is stuff about how he is attracted to pornography ( I have now started book 2 and it continues there too)
I read all the Morse bookds back in the day and enjoyed them, though I do recall he was a bit of a lad. My favourite was “The Wench is Dead” – kind of inspired by “The Daughter of Time” I think and none the worse for that! 🙂
Daughter of Time – now there’s a marvellous book!
Indeed – I may re-read for the 1951 Club!
WHAT a good idea. I might just have to copycat!
I think Morse is generally a bit worse with and about women in the books than he is in the TV series (and he’s not brilliant in the series either!) But I do like those little bits of wordplay; how pleasing to find them in a murder mystery.
I wonder whether, from what you say, the extremity of Morse’s letching got toned down on TV because the feeling of what was acceptable had changed in the I guess, 10 years between book 1 and the first episode, but also, how much gets changed to accommodate an actor and his image. Certainly in the book Morse’s salaciousness is almost on the edges. Though by book 2, which I’m now reading, it is clear he himself knows that, as he and Lewis visit a strip joint, trying to find a suspect, and Morse is measuring himself against Lewis, in terms of morality here, and aware that he does not want Lewis to know/suspect anything about his pornography fetish. He has some shame about how Lewis might see him. This is a little different from book 1, though of course it’s also part of developing relationship between the 2
I’m sure that changing attitudes during the decade between the first book and the first episode must be part of it – and also I think it can be a lot easier to go to extremes with a character on the page than on the screen, where you’re constantly confronted with the reality of a character, even if it’s not very nice.
That’s a very good point, re the extremity on page compared to screen. Also, I think of a programme like Life On Mars, which managed the change in acceptable attitudes brilliantly – Gene could be unremittingly sexist, offensive even – but the moral viewpoint the viewer was (hopefully) taking was Sam’s, so Gene was seen as an outrageous dinosaur, as were others in the team, stuck in attitudes common in their time, which passed for norms then. Sam, stood in for us, so we could be appalled by AND find Gene hilarious. We did not need to feel uncomfortable with Gene, authorial distance from those attitudes was clear
Yes, exactly – the audience ID character had attitudes we didn’t have to be ashamed of.
A lot of the culture and behaviour of the characters in the books is dated now. One thing that always surprises me is that whenever the characters stop for lunch, they go to the pub and start necking pints. No Pret-a-manger in those days, apparently.
I saw Colin Dexter speak once and he described how he started writing this book on a family holiday to Wales where it rained incessantly.
He also drew on his own deafness in his writing, especially The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn, my personal favourite of the novels.
Yes, sometimes you read books and think nothing has changed very much, and sometimes small things have shifted quite dramatically. I’m sure I will get to Nicholas Quinn at some point.
I’ve never read a Morse novel and only watched a couple of episodes – somehow it passed me by. I’ve heard he’s not the most likeable character particularly with regard to women – I might give him a try when I’m feeling able to tolerate him!
It’s interesting, I don’t ever expect to find totally admirable characters – Jackson Lamb, for example, in my recent Mick Herron discovery is pretty vile – but it is clear from the start that he is constantly criticised for his offensiveness. In this first Morse, I wasn’t quite sure what the standpoint was, how much the character himself and those around him were okay with the attitudes (and obviously,in 1975 dinosaurs were pretty well roaming the earth, as far as attitudes goe) Having finished the second, mulling it, and likely to wait a while longer before going on – but it is already interesting that Morse, who clearly values the steadfast and honourable Lewis, does not want Lewis to know anything about his interest in porno mags, so there is a feeling of shame Morse has, so a kind of statement is being made, because of that. Reading an ongoing series is quite interesting, when you come to it years after its writing, as I think you see things from a more long view – through today, rather than through then. It is quite possible that had I read this in 1975, though I’m sure I would have felt cross and uncomfortable, that kind of behaviour and those kind of statements out on the street was utterly prevalent, and it was only activists who were challenging it, and, constantly being accused of being joyless feminists.
Mind you, the recent Daily Fail take on Nichola Sturgeon and Theresa May’s meeting, did make me wonder if I had somehow fallen through a wormhole of time, and we WERE back some 40 years!
I think I’ve also heard him say he changed Morse slightly once the TV show took off, and wrote with that portrayal in mind.
This week I feel very much we’ve dropped backwards into a wormhole of 40 years ago 🙁
Yes, and the worms don’t even seem to be the useful ones that turn the soil over and aerate it. Instead, they are clearly the gutworms that no ones wants, and which weaken and damage their poor unfortunate hosts. Tapeworms Daily Mail, Tapeworms Paul Dacre, Tapeworms Donald Trump etc etc etc
But that is interesting about changes made once televised. I suppose if you lose the ability to display a characters complex thinking (as can happen in the written form) you have to find other ways of illustrating the authorial viewpoint, because you can’t have actors (not good ones, anyway) performing the moral commentary on behalf of the author. The actor has to portray retrograde characters or retrograde moments as we all do – we justify our misdeeds to ourselves in our own heads AS WE DO THEM, and rarely do them in a signalling ‘I am doing wrong’ manner. So I suspect that the TV Morse may not have been quite as uncomfortably lecherous as written Morse, and perhaps, as is the case when an actor is already well known, anyway gets overlaid with the affection the public might hold for him.
I do remember in a book about Hitchcock’s films, Hitch talking about how, in Notorious, I think, the fact that the audience were never going to accept Cary Grant as the villain (trying to kill his wife) – Cary was ALWAYS the good guy in their minds
I read and immensely enjoyed the entire Inspector Morse series by Colin Dexter. I’m happy that you have discovered it.
Thanks, Fictionophile, I shall be slowly proceeding through, and look forward to getting to know Morse and Lewis better