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.