Traditional crime writing at its best; the kind of book without which no armchair is complete
The Sunday Times
No one constructs a whodunit with more fiendish skill than Colin Dexter
The Guardian
Dexter has created a giant among fictional detectives
The Times
A character who will undoubtedly retain his place as one of the most popular and enduring of fictional detectives
- P. D. James, <i>The Sunday Telegraph</i>,
The writing is highly intelligent, the atmosphere melancholy, the effect haunting
The Daily Telegraph
The triumph is the character of Morse
Times Literary Supplement
Colin Dexter’s superior crime-craft is enough to make lesser practitioners sick with envy
The Oxford Times
[Morse is] the most prickly, conceited and genuinely brilliant detective since Hercule Poirot
The New York Times Book Review