1. Last Bus to Woodstock
Another year, another overly zealous reading project. I’m being a little more sensible this time around. In 2020 I read all 66 of Agatha Christie’s crime fiction novels. It was mostly wonderful though Postern of Fate almost killed me; death by a thousand baffling plot twists. This year I’m reigning my exuberance in. My dad and I will be reading all of Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse novels, (mercifully there only appear to be 13 of them). We were going to attempt to watch the corresponding adaptation on TV. However, frustratingly, for the first time since catch up telly was invented, there appear to be no Morse re-runs available. Fret not readers. I spend most of my evenings in the land where the mystery never ends. The instant I spot John Thaw’s face on the ITV Hub, I’ll let you know we’re cooking again.
I completed the first Morse novel at the end of last week. My dad, had already flown through it, is now tearing through the latest Ian Rankin and threatening to start into February’s Morse. We had a debrief on Saturday past. These days it’s not possible to get together for tea and cake and a proper book chat. Instead we discussed Last Bus to Woodstock whilst I walked drizzly laps of Victoria Park pond and Dad drunk coffee in his living room. Neither of us found it a particularly compelling read. We both expressed a similar hope that the next twelve novels pick up a bit. Otherwise it’s going to be a very long reading year.
Here are a few of things we thought about Last Bus to Woodstock. I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers. If you’ve read it yourself please let us know what you think. You can follow along using the hashtag #MorseMeAndDad I’m looking forward to next month’s novel which will be Last Seen Wearing. I’ll post our thoughts before the end of February.
This Morse is very different from John Thaw. Aside from the drinking and the crossword puzzles, (and of course, his unfortunate taste in women), Dexter’s Morse is nothing like the stately, gentile and absurdly cultured Morse of the small screen. I think i’ve been spoilt by #MyYearWithAgathaC Suchet plays Poirot like he’s just sauntered off Christie’s page. Thaw plays Morse with a lighter touch. Having grown up with the TV version, i struggled not to read Dexter’s version of Morse as wrong. A ludicrous reaction, when you consider that the character is Dexter’s creation. I found it helpful to think of Shaun Evan’s portrayal of the young Morse in the more recent TV series, Endeavour, as a kind of half way house between the Inspector Morse of Dexter’s novels and the John Thaw incarnation I’m so drawn to. Evans plays upon Morse’s sleazier and more hot-headed side. I am interested to see how Morse’s character evolves across the series. Will he eventually merge into his television self or will there always be a significant distance between the page and the screen?
Dexter is quite the wordy writer. There’s a lot of meandering description before he brings his reader to the action. Sometimes the action gets lost a little in the midst of his wordiness. There were several occasion when I felt tempted to take a full stop to yet another lengthy sentence or attack his slightly archaic phrasing. I think i’ve ruined myself on Christie’s brand of fast-paced crime fiction, where every paragraph is stacked with clues. I found myself reading Last Book to Woodstock too quickly, zeroing in on dialogue and action and occasionally losing the run of the plot. Dad thought the same and expressed the opinion that quite a bit of the novel could be excised without having any adverse effect on its overall quality. I have to say, I would agree.
A slight point, but a significant one. And I apologise for the fact that most of these thoughts are simply my attempts to transition from Christie to Dexter. I’ve become so accustomed to her style. I struggled with Dexter’s out of the blue ending, because whilst Christie’s novels specialise in misdirection, all the information necessary to solve the case is always contained within her text. The multiple narrative perspectives and voices from the periphery included in Last Bus to Woodstock meant I not only didn’t see the solution coming, I don’t think it was possible to. Once again I’m not complaining. I understand many crime fiction novels are written like this. But I liked the smug feeling I got from Christie, of solving the case before Miss Marple did. I suspect I will get over this. I just need to a little time to transition into a different crime writer’s style.
This is a novel very much of its time. Published in 1975, it includes lines like “the door was opened by a sad girl eating a tomato sandwich,” which date it in a charming nostalgic way and also lines like, “do you believe a young girl can get raped?” which, in 2021, will read as shockingly ignorant and offensive for the simple reason that they are. The story is narrated through what can only be described as an awfully male gaze. I really hope this lifts a little as the series rolls out. Reading this book now and noting the way woman are talked about and characterised, I very much doubt it would make it to publication in 2021 without a serious edit for misogyny.
Oh but Oxford is glorious. I’d read somewhere, I can’t remember where, that Dexter’s original vision for Inspector Morse was much less-focused upon the quads and turrets of academic Oxford and more heavily located in the housing estates and suburbs which surround the city. Here, we get both, muddled together, quite beautifully. The seedy newsagents and hard drinking pubs are thrown up against the libraries and corridors of the old colleges. This is the Morsian Oxford I recognise. I felt right at home here. The modern pitched up against the endearingly ancient. Low brow meets high brow. Villains emerging from all walks of life. Murder levelling the playing field. And I have to say that my favourite part of Last Bus to Woodstock was the wonderfully incongruous scene where Inspector Morse goes into Marks and Spencers to buy a pair of slip on plimsolls off the shelf. I apologise to Colin Dexter. I couldn’t help but imagine John Thaw in this scene, trying to mask his mortification with a blustering display of competency. Hoping the next book brings more of this.