The Wench is Dead

The eighth compelling novel in Colin Dexter's iconic series sees Inspector Morse take on a Victorian mystery from his hospital bed.

'Colin Dexter’s superior crime-craft is enough to make lesser practitioners sick with envy' - Oxford Times

The Wench is Dead is the eighth novel in Colin Dexter’s Oxford-set detective series.

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 .

The body of Joanna Franks was found at Duke’s Cut on the Oxford Canal at about 5.30 a.m. on Wednesday 22 June, 1859.

At around 10.15 a.m. on a Saturday morning in 1989 the body of Chief Inspector Morse – though very much alive – was removed to Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital. Treatment for a perforated ulcer was later pronounced successful.

As Morse begins his recovery, he comes across an account of the investigation and the trial that followed Joanna Franks’ death – and becomes convinced that the two men hanged for her murder were innocent .

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

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