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Fiction.
Mystery.
Suspense.
Thriller.
HTML:"Cunning...Your imagination will be frenetically flapping its wings until the very last chapter." THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD Morse is enjoying a rare if unsatisfying holiday in Dorset when the first letter appears in THE TIMES. A year before, a stunning Swedish student disappeared from Oxfordshire, leaving behind a rucksack with her identification. As the lady was dishy, young, and traveling alone, the Thames Valley Police suspected foul play. But without a body, and with precious few clues, the investigation ground to a halt. Now it seems that someone who can hold back no longer is composing clue-laden poetry that begins an enthusiastic correspondence among England's news-reading public. Not one to be left behind, Morse writes a letter of his ownâ??and follows a twisting path through the Wytham Woods that leads to a most shocking murd… (meer)
In a twisted case gone cold, an anonymous letter reopens the case of the missing Swedish Maiden case which leads to a decomposed body in a dense wood area. As the body is not the maiden, more questions are raised. Inspector Morse is called off his first vacation to resolve the case. The deeper he delves, the mystery of the maiden deepens. A second murder leads Morse to the killer. ( )
Una joven turista desaparece en un bosque sin dejar rastro. Cuando el inspector Morse se dispone a iniciar sus vacaciones en un pequeño pueblo costero, la noticia despierta su curiosidad. Dejándose llevar por su olfato, conduce a la policia local hasta unos restos humanos ocultos entre la maleza en el lugar más recóndito del bosque. Pero para sorpresa de todos el cadaver pertenece a un hombre.
Pretty great Morse mystery. Begins with Morse on vacation and hitting it off with a smarty married lady who has lots of affairs and is rather abrasive. Still... the attraction is strong until it turns out she is a little too wildly friendly and is dropped unceremoniously from Morse and the book (left an odd taste). In any case, the vacation is interrupted by an odd letter to the Times about a year old murder case from back home. Puzzling it out, turns out Morse is put back on the case (!!) and starts chipping away at the sordid affair of the wandering beautiful blonde swedish girl (presumed murdered). Great read! ( )
Obviously I recognise that its impact upon my reading habits is probably not the most significant aspect of the global COVID-19 crisis. It is, however, something that I have not been able to overlook. I realise how crucial my former daily commute, amounting to around an hour each way, not merely offered a nice parcel of time, but also served to frame a valuable daily ritual. Now that I find myself working from home, and living in what almost amounts to a mild form of house arrest, I am missing that regimentation. While I may get out of bed a little later, I seem to start work earlier and then work for longer. Without my day being bookended by my trek in and out of London on the Underground, my reading time seems to have vanished.
I have also found it difficult to concentrate on new books, and seem to be revisiting a lot of former favourites, which has in turn led to some significant reappraisals. In the nature of things, unless moved by some sort of feelings of duty or guilt, one generally only re-reads books that one enjoyed the first time around.
This was one such, and my initial recollection was that it was perhaps the strongest of the Inspector Morse series. Colin Dexter’s career as a novelist followed an unusual path. His early novels were ridiculously overcomplicated and featured a range of two-dimensional characters, peppered with deliberate and irritating flourishes that were there simply to demonstrate how clever Dexter was. Then, five or six books in, he hit a patch of strong, mid-season form, producing three or four novels that were genuinely accomplished, before subsiding into a coda of self-contemplation, culminating with the death of his protagonist.
I still think that this book belongs in that middle phase of well-crafted plots, combining plausible characters and plots, although, like the television series, I fear it has not aged well. First published in 1992, this book won the Crime Writers’ Association Dagger as best crime novel of the year. Nearly thirty years on, most of the crime-fiction reading public has come to expect rather grittier fare. Morse comes across as very irritating and complacent, but that was always part of the point about him as a character.
Of course, I suspect that I am in a minority of not many more than one in expressing what many (including one of my own sisters) will consider to be heretical views. Chief Inspector Morse has become one of the most popular fictional detectives. The original television series ran for several years, and has pawned not one but two equally prolific spin-offs, in [Lewis] and [Endeavour], and the books sold in huge numbers. I would also readily concede that I enjoyed watching the television series at the time. ( )
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Weather and rain have undone it again, And now you would never know There was once a road through the woods Before they planted the trees. It is underneath the coppice and heath And the thin anemones. Only the keeper sees That, where the ring-dove broods, And the badgers roll at ease, There was once a road through the woods.
From The Way Through the Woods by Rudyard Kipling
(Prolegomenon) Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be whiter, yea whiter, than snow (Isaiah ch. 1, v.18)
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations)
(Chapter 1) A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of Hell (George Bernard Shaw)
(Chapter 2) Mrs. Austen was well enough in 1804 to go with her husband and Jane for a holiday to Lyme Regis. Here we hear Jane's voice speaking once again in cheerful tones. She gives the news about lodgings and servants, about new acquaintances and walks on the Cobb, about some enjoyable sea bathing, about a ball at the local Assembly Rooms (David Cecil, A Portrait of Jane Austen)
(Chapter 3) Have you noticed that life, real honest-to-goodness life, with murders and catastrophes and fabulous inheritances, happens almost exclusively in the newspapers? (Jean Anouilh, The Rehearsal)
(Chapter 4) The morning is wiser than the evening (Russian proverb)
(Chapter 5) [none]
(Chapter 6) . . . and hence through life Chasing chance-started friendships (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "To the Revd. George Coleridge")
(Chapter 7) I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction (Aneurin Bevan, quoted in The Observer, 3 April 1960)
(Chapter 8) [none]
(Chapter 9) And I wonder how they should have been together! (T. S. Eliot, La Figlia Che Piange)
(Chapter 10) Mrs. Kidgerbury was the oldest inhabitant of Kentish Town, I believe, who went out charing, but was too feeble to execute her conceptions of that art (Charles Dickens, David Copperfield)
(Chapter 11) Nec scit qua sit iter (He knows not which is the way to take) (Ovid, Metamorphoses II)
(Chapter 12) Sigh out a lamentable tale of things, Done long ago, and ill done (John Ford, The Lover's Melancholy)
(Chapter 13) He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood (Samuel Johnson, The Idler)
(Chapter 14) Only the keeper sees That, where the ring-dove broods, And the badgers roll at ease, There was once a road through the woods (Rudyard Kipling, The Way Through the Woods)
(Chapter 15) At the very smallest wheel of our reasoning it is possible for a handful of questions to break the bank of our answers (Antonio Machado, Juan de Mairena)
(Chapter 16) Between 1871 and 1908 he published twenty volumes of verse, of little merit ("Alfred Austin", The Oxford Companion to English Literature, edited by Margaret Drabble)
(Chapter 17) [none]
(Chapter 18) A "strange coincidence" to use a phrase By which such things are settled now-a-days (Lord Byron, Don Juan)
(Chapter 19) I like to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the desire to use its own wings (Thomas Aldrich, Leaves from a Notebook)
(Chapter 20) When I complained of having dined at a splendid table without hearing one sentence worthy to be remembered, he [Dr. Johnson] said, "There is seldom any such conversation" (James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson)
(Chapter 21) It is only the first bottle that is expensive (French proverb)
(Chapter 22) It is a Definition-and-Letter-Mixture puzzle, each clue consists of a sentence which contains a definition of the answer and a mixture of the letters (Don Manley, Chambers Crossword Manual)
(Chapter 23) On another occasion, he was considering how best to welcome the postman, for he brought news from a world outside ourselves. I and he agreed to stand behind the front door at the time of his arrival and to ask him certain questions. On that day, however, the postman did not come (Peter Champkin, The Sleeping Life of Aspern Williams)
(Chapter 24) The Grantor leaves the guardianship of the Woodlands to the kindly sympathy of the University . . . The University will take all reasonable steps to preserve and maintain the woodlands and will use them for the instruction of suitable students and will provide facilities for research (Extract from the deed under which Wytham Wood was acquired by the University of Oxford on 4 August 1942 as a gift from Col. ffennell[sic])
(Chapter 25) For wheresoever the carcase is, there will be the eagles gathered together (St. Luke ch. 24, v. 28)
(Chapter 26) Science is spectrum analysis: art is photosynthesis (Karl Kraus, Half Truths One and a Half Truths)
(Chapter 27) It was a maxim with Foxey -- our revered father, gentlemen -- "Always suspect everybody" (Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop)
(Chapter 28) Be it ever so humble there's no place like home for sending one slowly crackers (Diogenes Small, Obiter Dicta)
(Chapter 29) Every roof is agreeable to the eye, until it is lifted; then we find tragedy and moaning women, and hard-eyed husbands (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Experience)
(Chapter 30) A man's bed is his resting place, but a woman's is often her rack (James Thurber, Further Fables for Our Time)
(Chapter 32) And Apollo gave Sarpedon dead to be borne by swift companions, to Death and Sleep, twin brethren, who bore him through the air to Lycia, that broad and pleasant land (Homer, Iliad, xvi)
(Chapter 33) What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary (Richard Harkness, New York Herald Tribune, 15 June, 1960)
(Chapter 34) The newly arrived resident in North Oxford is likely to find that although his next door neighbour has a first-class degree from some prestigious university this man is not quite so clever as his wife (Country Living, January 1992)
(Chapter 35) Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does (Steuart [sic] Henderson Britt, New York Herald Tribune, 30 October, 1956)
(Chapter 36) Nine tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which moralists inculcate in the young; the other tenth is physiological, and will occur in one way or another whatever the state of the law may be (Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals)
(Chapter 37) To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrifying of those extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality (Edgar Allan Poe, Tales of Mystery and Imagination)
(Chapter 38) Men are made stronger on realization that the helping hand they need is at the end of their own right arm (Sidney J. Phillips, speech, July 1953)
(Chapter 39) In a world in which duty and self-discipline have lost out to hedonism and self-satisfaction, there is nothing like closing your eyes and going with the flow. At least in a fantasy, it all ends happily ever after (Edwina Currie, The Observer, 23 February, 1992)
(Chapter 40) Then the little Hiawatha Learned of every bird its language, Learned their names and all their secrets (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha)
(Chapter 41) Little by little the agents have taken over the world. They don't do anything, they don't make anything -- they just stand their and take their cut (Jean Giradoux, The Madwoman of Chaillot)
(Chapter 42) To some small extent these Greek philosophers made use of observation, but only spasmodically until the time of Aristotle. Their legacy lies elsewhere: in their astonishing powers of deductive and inductive reasoning (W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers)
(Chapter 43) It is not the criminal things which are hardest to confess, but those things of which we are ashamed (Rousseau, Confessions)
(Chapter 44) Impressions there may be which are fitted with links and which may catch hold on each other and may render some sort of coalescence possible (John Livingstone Lowes, The Road to Xanadu)
(Chapter 45) His addiction to drinking caused me to censure Aspern Williams for a while, until I saw as true that wheels must have oil unless they run on nylon bearings. He could stay still and not want oil, or move -- if he could overcome the resistance (Peter Champkin, The Waking Life of Aspern Williams)
(Chapter 46) A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees (William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
(Chapter 47) Yonder, lightening other loads, The seasons range the country roads, But here in London streets I ken No such helpmates, only men (A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lady)
(Chapter 48) Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs (Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson)
(Chapter 49) An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town-meeting or a vestry (Thomas Jefferson, Letters)
(Chapter 50) There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy (Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus)
(Chapter 51) He that is down needs fear no fall, He that is low, no pride (John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress)
(Chapter 52) Everything comes if a man will only wait (Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred)
(Chapter 53) As we passed through the entrance archway, Randolph said with pardonable pride, "This is the finest view in England" (Lady Randolph Churchill, on her first visit to Blenheim)
(Chapter 54) Michael Stich (W. Germany) beat Boris Becker (W. Germany) 6-4, 7-6, 6-4 (Result of the Men's Singles Championship at Wimbledon, 1991)
(Chapter 55) Thanatophobia (n): a morbid dread of death, or (sometimes) of the sight of death: a poignant sense of human mortality, almost universal except amongst those living on Olympus (Small's English Dictionary)
(Chapter 56) The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day: Now spurs the lated traveller apace To gain the timely inn (Shakespeare, Macbeth)
(Chapter 57) FALSTAFF: We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow. SHALLOW: That we have, that we have, that we have; in faith, Sir John, we have (Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2)
(Chapter 58) He who asks the questions cannot avoid the answers (Cameroonian proverb)
(Chapter 59) This is the reason why mothers are more devoted to their children than fathers: it is that they suffer more in giving them birth and are more certain that they are their own (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics)
(Chapter 60) Music and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is (Samuel Pepys, Diary)
(Chapter 61) A reasonable probability is the only certainty (Edgar Watson Howe, Country Town Sayings)
(Chapter 62) The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties (Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray)
(Chapter 63) All that's left to happen Is some deaths (my own included). Their order, and their manner, Remain to be learnt (Philip Larkin, Collected Poems)
(Chapter 64) The lips frequently parted with the murmur of words. She seemed to belong rightly to a madrigal (Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native)
(Chapter 65) How strange are the tricks of memory, which often hazy as a dream about the most important events, religiously preserve the merest trifles (Sir Richard Burton, Sind Revisited)
(Chapter 66) As when that divelish yron engin, wrought In deepest Hell, and framd by furies skill, With windy nitre and quick sulphur fraught, And ramd with bollett rownd, ordaind to kill, Conceiveth fyre (Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene)
(Chapter 67) Scire volunt secreta domus, ataque inde timeri (They watch for household secrets hour by hour And feed therefrom their appetite for power) (Juvenal, Satire III)
(Chapter 68) The Light of Lights Looks always on the motive, not the deed, The Shadow of Shadows on the deed alone (W. B. Yeats, The Countess Cathleen)
(Chapter 69) Just as every person has his idiosyncrasies, so has every typewriter (Handbook of Office Maintenance, 9th edition)
Fiction.
Mystery.
Suspense.
Thriller.
HTML:"Cunning...Your imagination will be frenetically flapping its wings until the very last chapter." THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD Morse is enjoying a rare if unsatisfying holiday in Dorset when the first letter appears in THE TIMES. A year before, a stunning Swedish student disappeared from Oxfordshire, leaving behind a rucksack with her identification. As the lady was dishy, young, and traveling alone, the Thames Valley Police suspected foul play. But without a body, and with precious few clues, the investigation ground to a halt. Now it seems that someone who can hold back no longer is composing clue-laden poetry that begins an enthusiastic correspondence among England's news-reading public. Not one to be left behind, Morse writes a letter of his ownâ??and follows a twisting path through the Wytham Woods that leads to a most shocking murd