I enjoyed the TV series years ago, despite never being able to follow the plot and finding Morse himself basically unlikeable if occasionally brilliant. I mostly enjoyed the relationship between Morse and Lewis, and the convoluted journey towards a solution.
I took this out of the library to read while convalescing after major surgery and I think I am still reeling from the blatant and entrenched misogyny which oozes nastily from almost every page! I was a young woman in the 1970s and this reminded me, horribly, of the attitudes that were all too prevalent and so, so hard to push back against.
But I persevered - I need a lot of books at the moment - and I enjoyed aspects of the labyrinthine plot and its final resolution. I somehow managed to compartmentalise the misogynist element, just in order to get on with trying to work out the plot.
Whether I'll bother with another of Dexter's books, I'm not sure. The misogyny is not even particularly attached to anyone in particular, although Morse is obviously seriously tainted - expecting women to be available to him and labelling them 'tart' if he decides he's not interested - but it seems that whole objectification of women strand is the author's own fantasy world. No thanks.

Sooo complicated!!

Rambling. Complicated. A host of unlikeable characters. Morse is pretty much a dirty old man.

*Audiobook*

This story was always my favorite episode of the tv show.
Very happy to see the tv adaptation was followed exactly.
It is very sexiest but given the time it was written & its main male audience I can read past it.

I plan on reading other episodes i enjoyed.

This, the third of Dexter’s Morse novels, shows more depth in the writing style compared to the first two novels, and much more development of Morse’s character.

Another good Inspector Morse novel.

By this point I can't say I'm developing much respect for Morse as a detective, or as a human being. His method appears to be to fit everyone in the scene with the crime and see if he can bully a confession from someone--only to then prove the confession false and move on down the row. The solutions are intricate, but the path to them is plodding. My sense is that mysteries used to be a genre read largely by men and these pander to the worst of their stereotypical preoccupations, while promising punishment for anyone who actually manages to get laid.