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The Wench is Dead

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About this listen

Winner of the CWA Gold Dagger award, The Wench is Dead is the eighth novel in Colin Dexter's Oxford-set detective series. As portrayed by John Thaw in ITV's Inspector Morse.

That night he dreamed in Technicolor. He saw the ochre-skinned, scantily clad siren in her black, arrowed stockings. And in Morse's muddled computer of a mind, that siren took the name of one Joanna Franks . . .

Early in the morning of the 22nd of June, 1859, the body of Joanna Franks was found floating at Duke’s Cut along the Oxford Canal – an event which led to the trial and hanging of two suspected murderers.

A hundred and thirty years later Chief Inspector Morse is bedbound and recovering from a perforated ulcer at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital when he is handed an old book to read, one that recounts the trial of a murder aboard the Barbara Bray canal boat: the murder of Joanna Franks. Investigating the account of the trial, Morse begins to question whether the two men hanged were truly guilty and sets out to prove his suspicions from the confines of his hospital bed . . .

The Wench is Dead is followed by the ninth Inspector Morse book, The Jewel That Was Ours.

 Cosy Crime Thrillers Fiction Mystery Police Procedural Thriller & Suspense Traditional Detectives Detective

Critic reviews

Traditional crime writing at its best; the kind of book without which no armchair is complete
No one constructs a whodunit with more fiendish skill than Colin Dexter
Dexter has created a giant among fictional detectives
A character who will undoubtedly retain his place as one of the most popular and enduring of fictional detectives (P. D. James, Sunday Telegraph)
The writing is highly intelligent, the atmosphere melancholy, the effect haunting
The triumph is the character of Morse
Colin Dexter’s superior crime-craft is enough to make lesser practitioners sick with envy
[Morse is] the most prickly, conceited and genuinely brilliant detective since Hercule Poirot
All stars
Most relevant
still one of his best, miss his stories and character. rip Colin . brilliant book

brillant

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Loved this compelling book.
Beautifully written and narrated
Colin Dexter and Samuel West at their very best

Brilliant

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I loved this book.. I’ve got most of them .. Sam West brilliant as always but it was the story that really resonated with me.. something very very human about it .. I loved it

One of the BEST !

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I decided to listen to this, as the TV version is excellent. Sadly, the book, in my opinion is not. it's the third Morse novel I've listened to. I shall, in future, concentrate on the tv version.

As Slow As Narrow Boat

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