An Endeavour Morse Q&A
Review of the Mysterious Press/Open Road Media Kindle eBook (May 10, 2022)

Perhaps I was unfair to author Michael Connelly when I first discovered The Mysterious Profiles (2022) a few weeks ago and gave a 2-star rating to the Harry Bosch profile as Recycled Harry Bosch Origins. That was the result of a 'one - two' deception of discovering that the profile was dated from 2007 and that the eBook consisted of 50% advertising, not really Connelly's fault.

These profiles are now marketed as individual eBooks by Open Road Media as of 2022. 21 of them were mostly written in 2007 and first collected in The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives (2009) edited by Otto Penzler, who founded The Mysterious Press Bookshop and Publishing Imprint. The Bosch and Morse profiles both date from that time. 7 additional profiles have been added since then.

See screengrab at https://scontent-ord5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/333560955_221622597069715_394...
The current selection of 28 Mysterious Profiles eBooks published as of 2022. Image from my own screengrab.

There was more satisfaction and less deception involved in the Morse profile by Colin Dexter (1930-2017) though. I knew what to expect with the padded advertising this time and there was a sense of a more complete profile of the Inspector Morse series (1975-1999) since both it and its TV series (1987-2000) had ended by the time of writing.

Dexter structures the profile of his detective as a series of questions and answers based on what he usually had to answer from readers' enquiries. There is much wonderful trivia here, including tidbits such as Dexter switching Morse's car in the books from an original Lancia to a Jaguar when the TV-series couldn't find the correct model of the original car. There is the origin of Morse's first name in his Quaker heritage, where various virtues and attributes were the source of Christian names.

There is the reminder that Morse's faithful assistant Lewis was originally written as the older of the two, a fact that was simply ignored in the books after younger actor Kevin Whately came to embody the role in partnership with John Thaw's more senior Morse. Dexter was so caught up in John Thaw's portrayal of his detective that he even wrote into his will that no other actor would be allowed to portray the detective as long as his estate still held the copyright. The estate lawyers got around that by creating a younger version of Morse in the later Endeavour series (2012-2023) with actor Shaun Evans.

Soundtrack
This can only be the yearning and mournful Inspector Morse theme music by composer Barrington Pheloung, composed for the TV series, in its extended version which you can listen to on YouTube here. The use of the morse code for M-O-R-S-E as the main theme is revealed in the video as well, by displaying the dots and dashes.

Trivia and Link
I note that the Mysterious Profiles are available online at Scribd if you are a member there. ( )

A nice little interview with Colin Dexter (requiescat in pace, 1930-2017) about his most famous creation: Inspector Morse. A booklet put out by Otto Penzler and the Mysterious Bookshop, it is insightful and entertaining, though nothing here is particularly new for those who have read a lot about Morse or Dexter, or watched an interview with Dexter online. ( )