Colin Dexter

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. Then, two days later, a naked and battered corpse is dragged from the River Cherwell. A coincidence? Morse is determined to prove the link...

The death of Sylvia Kaye figured in Thursday afternoon's edition of the

The sweet countenance of Reason greeted Morse serenely when he woke, and told him that it would be no bad idea to have a quiet look at the problem itself before galloping off to a solution. Chief Inspector Morse was alone among the congregation in suspecting continued unrest in the quiet parish of St Frideswide's.

Morse switched on the gramophone to 'play', and sought to switch his mind away from all the terrestrial troubles. Sometimes, this way, he almost managed to forget. But not tonight.

Many people in the Haworth Hotel that fateful evening had been wearing some sort of disguise; and the man who had died had been the most consummate artist of them all. Chief Inspector Morse seldom allowed himself to be caught up in celebrations. So the murder inquiry in the festive hotel had a certain appeal. It was a crime worthy of the season.

The thought suddenly occurred to Morse that this would be a marvellous time to murder a few of the doddery old bachelor dons. No wives to worry about their whereabouts; no landladies to whine about the unpaid rents. In fact nobody would miss most of them at all.

Morse was beset by a nagging feeling. Most of his fanciful notions about the Taylor girl had evaporated and he had begun to suspect that further investigation into Valerie's disappearance would involve little more than sober and tedious routine.

That night he dreamed in Technicolor. He saw the ochre-skinned, scantily clad siren in her black, arrowed stockings. As Morse begins his recovery, he comes across an account of the investigation and the trial that followed Joanna Franks' death ... and becomes convinced that the two men hanged for her murder were innocent.