Colin Dexter

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Norman Colin Dexter OBE (born September 29, 1930 in Stamford , Lincolnshire , † March 21, 2017 in Oxford ) was a British writer of crime novels in which his main character, Inspector Morse, solved his cases in an unusual way. Motifs from his novels form the basis for three British television series: Inspector Morse - Murder Commission Oxford , The Young Inspector Morse and Lewis - The Oxford Crime .

Life

Dexter came from a middle-class family. The visit to the Stamford School, one of the traditional English public schools , was made possible by a scholarship. After graduating from school, he did his military service in the Royal Corps of Signals . Afterwards, he studied classical subjects at Christ's College of the University of Cambridge . He finished his studies in 1958 with a master’s degree. He taught for some time at Wyggeston and Queen Elizabeth I College in Leicester . From 1957 he taught at Loughborough Grammar School and from 1959 at Tresham College of Further and Higher Education in the Midlands. In 1966, when he began to show signs of deafness, he accepted a post at an Oxford college , primarily responsible for preparing and reviewing test papers, and which he held until he retired in 1988 clothed. From November 2008, Dexter was instrumental in the episode How to Solve a Cryptic Crossword of the BBC series Timeshift .

Dexter died in Oxford in March 2017 at the age of 86.

The change to the author

The almost anecdotal story of how he started writing his detective novels was widely circulated : In 1972 Dexter was on a family vacation in Wales that was completely rainy, so that the lecturer, bored in the hotel, wrote two mediocre mystery stories. He then thought he could do better and wrote “The Last Bus to Woodstock”, introducing the character of the young Inspector Morse. The experience of being stuck in a hotel was described by Dexter in a humorous way in “A Mass for All the Dead”.

Characteristic

Dexter's novels all play in Oxford and the surrounding area as well as the cultured Oxbridge - milieu . Morse always solves his cases unconventionally and likes to pursue several theories, whereby his extensive general knowledge always comes to the rescue, which he likes to demonstrate when filling out the record-breaking, morning crossword puzzle from the Times . He always distrusts easy solutions; The motive of the perpetrator is important to him. He never renounces the ideas of his employees, even though everything is going too slowly for himself. He even takes up cases that have long since been filed. Dexter describes his hero as a highly ambivalent personality: Morse, unhappily in love at an early age, lives lonely but in good circumstances thanks to an inheritance. He always looks strangely attractive to suspicious women or later victims who succumb to his charisma and the gaze of his steel-blue eyes.

However, since this love always remains unfulfilled - except for brief moments "(A Mass for All the Dead)" or even includes the tragedy of the missed opportunity, as for example in "The Dead of Jericho", this explains his tendency to be alone and the supposedly thought-accelerating alcohol, which worsens his diabetes and ultimately leads to his death, with Dexter dying his hero, but still letting him solve the case. In addition, Morse is probably next to Josephine Tey's inspector Alan Grant, who as a bored hospital patient in "Alibi for a King" ( Daughter of Time , 1951) even the bad reputation of Richard III. as a multiple murderer was able to rehabilitate, the only hero of a crime thriller who solves a criminal case more than 100 years ago "(Murder on the Oxford Canal )" from his sick bed .

Awards

Works

Novels

  • Last Bus to Woodstock , 1975
    • The last bus to Woodstock. A case for Inspector Morse . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2000, ISBN 3-499-22820-3
  • Last Seen Wearing , 1976
    • ... she was last seen . Translated by Marie S. Hammer. New edition Rowohlt, Reinbek 2000, ISBN 3-499-22821-1
    • Last seen in Kidlington . Translated by Marie S. Hammer. Zurich: Unionsverlag, 2018, ISBN 978-3-29320806-3
  • The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn , 1977
    • The silent world of Nicholas Quinn. A case for Chief Inspector Morse . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2002, ISBN 3-499-23220-0
  • Service of All the Dead , 1979
    • A mass for all the dead. A case for Chief Inspector Morse . New edition Rowohlt, Reinbek 2001, ISBN 3-499-22845-9
  • The Dead of Jericho , 1981
  • The Riddle of the Third Mile , 1983
  • The Secret of Annexe 3 , 1986
    • Beware of masquerades. A case for Chief Inspector Morse . Translated by Marie S. Hammer. New edition Rowohlt, Reinbek 2002, ISBN 3-499-23221-9
    • The secret of room 3 . Translated by Marie S. Hammer. Zurich: Unionsverlag, 2020, ISBN 978-3293208384
  • The Wench Is Dead , 1989
  • The Jewel That Was Ours , 1991
  • The Way Through The Woods , 1992
    • Dark reasons. A case for Chief Inspector Morse . Translated by Karin Polz. New edition Rowohlt, Reinbek 2004, ISBN 3-499-23567-6
  • The Daughter Of Cain , 1994
    • The corpse by the river. A case for Chief Inspector Morse . New edition Rowohlt, Reinbek 2002, ISBN 3-499-23222-7
  • Death is Now My Neighbor , 1996
    • Death is my neighbor. A case for Chief Inspector Morse . Translated by Ute Tanner. New edition Rowohlt, Reinbek 2002, ISBN 3-499-23223-5
  • The Remorseful Day , 1999
    • And our life is short. A case for Chief Inspector Morse . Translated by Ute Tanner. New edition Rowohlt, Reinbek 2000, ISBN 3-499-22819-X

stories

  • "Morse's Greatest Mystery and Other Stories". 1993

Note: The novels and stories - with the exception of a handful of short stories - fully translated at Rowohlt and as Rowohlt - Paperback published.

The Swiss Union Publishing House brought out Colin Dexter's "old-fashioned" crime novels in revised translation from 2018. The new edition is consistently represented in the top 25 of the Independent bestseller list (fiction) of the Börsenblatt des Deutschen Buchhandels.

Film adaptations

There is an English television series Inspector Morse, Murder Commission Oxford (produced 1987-2000 by Carlton Television) around Inspector Morse (actor: John Thaw , 1942-2002), the 33 episodes of which are based in part on the novels Colin Dexter. Thaw played - himself marked by cancer - his last role in the episode The Remorseful Day , in which Morse, played by him, also comes to an end. In the film adaptations, Colin Dexter, like Alfred Hitchcock , made a regular cameo appearance, often sitting at the bar in a pub or meeting one of the film actors in the college environment.

From 2006 to 2015 a spin-off series was produced with Lewis - Der Oxford Krimi , which focuses on the adventures of Morse's assistant, Robert Lewis, who has now been promoted to Detective Inspector, and who is now himself the mentor for a young and relatively inexperienced police officer , James Hathaway, is.

The prequel series Endeavor has been running on ITV since 2012 . She tells about the young detective constable Endeavor Morse ( Shaun Evans ). John Thaw's daughter Abigail plays the role of the journalist Dorothea Frazil. This series has been broadcast on ZDFneo under the title Der Junge Inspektor Morse since September 3, 2017 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The British writer Colin Dexter is dead. In: Rheinische Post . Rheinische Post , March 21, 2017, accessed on March 21, 2017 .
  2. ^ "Timeshift" How to Solve a Cryptic Crossword (TV Episode 2008) - IMDb. Retrieved October 16, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Colin Dexter, creator of Inspector Morse, dies aged 86. In: BBC News . March 21, 2017, accessed October 16, 2019 .
  4. ^ A b Inspector Morse - Season 1: Morse's Law: "There's always time for one more pint". ( Memento from February 2, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: dvdmaniacs.de, September 12, 2014, accessed on September 15, 2014 (English).
  5. ↑ Klaus-Peter Walter (Ed.): Reclams Krimi-Lexikon . Authors and works. Reclam Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-150-10509-9 , p. 96.
  6. ^ The return of the dead Inspector Morse In: kurier.at of August 7, 2018, accessed September 20, 2018.
  7. ↑ Independent bestseller list (fiction) August 2018 In: boersenblatt.net , accessed September 20, 2018.
  8. ↑ The young Inspector Morse . zdf.de | Films / Series: The Young Inspector Morse. August 23, 2017. Retrieved September 3, 2017.
  9. ↑ Glenn Riedmeier: "Endeavor": ZDFneo shows prequel for "Inspector Morse" In: TV Wishlist , July 29, 2017, accessed on September 3, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Dexter, Colin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dexter, Norman Colin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British crime novel writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Stamford , Lincolnshire , England , UK
DATE OF DEATH March 21, 2017
Place of death Oxford , Oxfordshire , England , UK