Title: Last Seen Wearing
Author: Colin Dexter
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 360
Rating: 8/10
This book is another entry in Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse series, and here we get to watch as the detective is assigned to a cold case. But maybe the case isn’t that cold, because some new evidence is discovered and he’s given a lead to follow up on.
But with no body, it’s difficult to prove that a murder has even occurred. It’s a tangled web of intrigue that we’re looking at here, and we get to see it through his eyes – of course, Lewis comes into it as well, and he actually provides some useful insights, although it’s ultimately Morse who does most of the investigation. But will he find the answer out too late?
One of the things that I liked about this book was that Dexter did a great job of introducing you to his world – Morse works in and around Oxford, which isn’t far from me, and I even spotted a reference to High Wycombe, which is where I live. Because of that, it makes the story somehow more enjoyable, at least for me. The characters also feel real, and even though it’s set very much amongst the generation before mine, they were also easy to relate to, in some ways.
And of course, there’s the fact that it’s easy to read this, and the pages just whizz past. I read the whole book across the space of a couple of days, and there was never a dull moment – even the initial build-up wasn’t as slow as it was in some of the other Morse books, and I felt like the motives were well-thought out and realistic, and introduced slowly, more like a dawning epiphany than a sudden slap in the face.
Overall then, I enjoyed this as much as – if not more than – the other Morse books that I’ve read, and it definitely left me wanting to read the rest of the books in the series. It’s not a bad place to start if you’re new to Dexter’s work. So go ahead – enjoy it!