Home » Book Reviews » Colin Dexter » The Jewel That Was Ours by Colin Dexter
Possible spoilers ahead
I am always intrigued by the quotes at the top of each chapter in Morse books, it gives a hint of the theme of the chapter and is often a thought-provoking quote, plus I am full of admiration for how obviously well-read the author is. I also love the frequent use of brackets, these seem for me to represent Morse’s thoughts, even though the book isn’t written from Morse’s point of view, eg ‘(the newly promoted) Sergeant Dixon’, says to me that Morse perhaps isn’t fully confident in Dixon’s abilities as a Sergeant and questions if she should have been promoted, tee hee! And there is a map of Oxford at the start of the book, hurrah, I love seeing maps in books.
Morse books do make me feel confused though, I think I prefer traditional detective books with clues given throughout so you can form your ideas of ‘whodunnit’ and then all is revealed at the end (and inevitably my guess is wrong!), rather than in Morse books where he gives solution after solution and then realises he’s wrong on all these solutions, then finally gets it right. I get a bit lost with quite what’s happening then, I keep thinking we’ve been told who’s done it and how, and am then trying to follow Morse’s reasoning to put all the pieces together, and then a couple of pages later it all falls apart and we’re back to square one and the pieces are thrown around again. I find that style a bit exhausting to read, to be honest, but that’s just my taste. I can see the style does beautifully demonstrate Morse’s characteristics of self-confidence and arrogance though, with him being certain he is right, and also his enthusiasm and dedication for finding the criminal, as even though he realises he is wrong this time he continues on, and also perhaps this way of finding the criminal is more true to life instead of the traditional fictional detective just having an almost magical instinct for identifying the guilty person the very first time he meets them and then just needing to find evidence to prove it. But I think I prefer the traditional fictional detective story style myself and find it more entertaining to read, perhaps this is me preferring escapism to real life.
