The Way Through the Woods by Colin Dexter

"Good of you to spare a few minutes."

"If I can help in any way..." said Lewis warily.

"You know Morse better than most."

"Nobody knows him all that well."

"You've got a reasonable idea how his mind works though."

"He's got a strange sort of mind - "

"Not many'd disagree with you."

"He's good at some things."

"Such as?"

"He's not bad at catching murderers for a start."

-The Way Through the Woods

Oh, I just can't get enough of British mysteries. I recently started watching Prime Suspect, which is satisfyingly complex and gives Helen Mirren lots of opportunities to be awesome (at which she excels, naturally). And now my first Inspector Morse mystery - Morse is a television series as well, and if the show's as well done as The Way Through the Woods, I'll undoubtedly check it out at some point.

As this is the 10th Inspector Morse book, I had some catching up to do in terms of characters. Morse himself, I quickly discovered, is as well known among his fellows in the CID for his hard drinking and prowess with the ladies as he is for his masterful detective work. He's not necessarily well liked - he sets himself too much apart for that - but he is grudgingly admired. At the start of The Way Through the Woods, Morse has surprised his colleagues by actually taking a vacation. Naturally, though, this doesn't stop him from following an intriguing story in the local paper: a poem sent to the police that seems to suggest a lead in the case of a missing (and presumed dead) young Swedish woman.

Morse is on the case as soon as he returns to work, and the clues start piling up. It seems that he is well on his way to finding the murderer, but then things start to get a bit twisty. With the aid of his trusty right-hand man, Inspector Lewis, Morse sorts through the players and the many, many lies they've told.

The lying, of course, is a great deal of what can keep a mystery reader on her toes. Everyone is lying to protect himself, but it takes a while to figure out who is trying to keep a lid on his dirty little secret and who has actually committed a crime. The Way Through the Woods certainly kept me guessing through its entirety - Dexter is fond of giving the reader just enough information to figure out that a character isn't on the up and up, without revealing why that might be. It certainly gives one a lot to puzzle over, and leaves the clever Morse looking exactly as smart as he is meant to*.

I liked Morse, but not as much as I like Kurt Wallander, for example, or Jackson Brodie. It might just take more books to get to know him better. I'd like to read the first book in the series next, in order to get a better introduction. I liked Lewis, who seemed far more relatable, and I'm interested in exploring Lewis's own television series, which I remember running on Masterpiece Mystery! last year (though I didn't get the opportunity to watch).

Up next: Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, which I recall being on a lot of year-end top 10 lists a couple of years back.

*Unlike, for example, in The Da Vinci Code, in which Robert Langdon is meant to be brilliant, but doesn't immediately recognize backwards writing (which da Vinci is famous for using in his notebooks). Sigh. Yes, I'm still bitter about that confoundedly popular book.