The third Inspector Morse omnibus - Colin Dexter

Last Bus to Woodstock

'"Do you think I'm wasting your time, Lewis?

Lewis was nobody's fool and was a man of some honesty and integrity.

"Yes, sir."

An engaging smile crept across Morse's mouth. He thought they could get on well together...'

The death of Sylvia Kaye figured dramatically in Thursday afternoon's edition of the Oxford Mail. By Friday evening Inspector Morse had informed the nation that the police were looking for a dangerous man - facing charges of wilful murder, sexual assault and rape. But as the obvious leads fade into twilight and darkness, Morse becomes more and more convinced that passion holds the key...

The Wench is Dead

'That night he dreamed in Technicolour. 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 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, 22nd 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 trial that followed Joanna Franks' death ... and becomes convinced that the two men hanged for her murder were innocent...

Jewel That Was Ours

'He looked overweight around the midriff, though nowhere else, and she wondered whether perhaps he drank too much. He looked weary, as if he had been up most of the night conducting his investigations. ..'

For Oxford, the arrival of twenty-seven American tourists is nothing out of the ordinary... until one of their number is found dead in Room 310 at the Randolph Hotel. It looks like a sudden - and tragic - accident. Only Chief Inspector Morse appears not to overlook the simultaneous theft of jewel-encrusted antique from the victim's handbag... Then, two days later, a naked and battered corpse is dragged from the River Cherwell. A coincidence? Maybe. But this time Morse is determined to prove the link...