Books · Colin Dexter
Inspector Morse: The Complete Reading Guide
Colin Dexter wrote thirteen Inspector Morse novels between 1975 and 1999, introducing the crossword-loving, opera-adoring detective years before John Thaw made him a household name. The TV series adapted most of the novels directly, occasionally reworking or renaming a story for the screen, and grew to 33 feature-length episodes in the process. Here's the full reading order.
Prefer to watch first? See the Inspector Morse show guide.
The Inspector Morse Novels, In Order
Last Bus to Woodstock
Dexter's 1975 debut, introducing Morse and Lewis through the murder of a young woman found in a Woodstock pub car park.
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Morse reopens a two-year-old missing-persons case after a new letter surfaces in the vanished schoolgirl's handwriting.
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A deaf examinations officer is found poisoned, drawing Morse into a case tangled with leaked exam papers and private affairs.
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A churchwarden's murder pulls Morse into the closed, watchful world of an Oxford parish.
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A woman Morse has personal feelings for is found dead in an apparent suicide he refuses to accept at face value.
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A missing Oxford don and a badly mutilated body force Morse to question exactly whose remains he's looking at.
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A New Year's Eve murder at a hotel leaves Morse trying to identify a victim nobody can quite place.
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Hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer, Morse investigates a 130-year-old canal murder from his sickbed. Won the CWA Gold Dagger.
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A stolen Saxon jewel and a tour group visiting Oxford give Morse a puzzle with an unusually international cast of suspects.
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A year-old missing-persons case reopens through competing theories about what really happened to a vanished woman.
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A retired Oxford don's murder draws Morse into a case with roots that reach back through several intertwined families.
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A shooting next door to Morse's own flat becomes personal, and reveals more about the detective himself than any case before it.
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Dexter's final Morse novel, closing out the series and its detective for good.
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Morse's Greatest Mystery and Other Stories
A collection of Dexter's shorter Morse fiction, sitting alongside the thirteen main novels.
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