Re-examining a Favourite

For this exercise, I’d like you to take a story that gripped, surprised and satisfied you, then deconstruct it. It can be a novel or a brilliant short story, but make sure it’s something you’re familiar with so that you can read it again in a more critical way. What kept you focused? How does the author play with your emotions? Where were the surprises? What was laid down in the narrative to prepare for them? How are those clues hidden? In hindsight, should you have seen it coming?







The Wench is Dead is the 8th Inspector Morse novel written by Colin Dexter, although the challenge was to read a book you know well and deconstruct it with, what kept you focused? How does the author play with your emotions? Where were the surprises? What was laid down in the narrative to prepare for them? How are those clues hidden? In hindsight, should you have seen it coming?



So, what kept me focused was the shorter nature of the plot with only being 5hrs 44mins around half the size of books I am used to reading. I first came across this book in 1998 when it was adapted for TV with John Thaw in the role and the TV adaptation was only around 1hr 40mins so one of the biggest surprises was the number of the changes from the original book. For example, Lewis Morse’s sidekick was not involved in the TV plot at all, whereas, in the actual book Lewis undertook part of the role of Constable Curshaw who was in the TV adaptation.



The book itself had been constructed as if it was taken from court transcripts and was more formal than I was initially expecting. As the TV version took these and dramatized them into Victorian flashbacks I didn’t realise how important those flashbacks were in depicting the historical element of the story.



The author played with my emotions by showing a different side to Morse than was in the other 20 TV versions that were made purely for TV, I was really surprised to discover there were only 13 books written in the series. You got to see another side to Morse by the way that he related to the nurses in the novel and the smutty book provided by Lewis, this is underplayed in the TV adaptation so as a consequence you don’t really get to know Morse as well as in the 5 and a bit hours in this book.



There is also a number of character changes which frustrated me as somebody who knew the plot well. For example, there is no Doctor VanDurah in the book. Having an academic character made the plot less dry than the amateur in the opposite bed who wrote it in the actual book.



Because of the historical nature of the plot and the fact that you were focused on whether Morse would recover, as a big fan of the character, this masked the solution although because the book within a book was divided into 4 parts the clues to the solution were there, and reiterated several times by Dexter to allow the reader to possibly guess the solution.



But, as with all historical novels because of my lack or prior knowledge of the period I was unable to guess the solution unlike a traditional Morse novel.