INSPECTOR MORSE (08): THE WENCH IS DEAD

The Wench is Dead is the eighth novel in Colin Dexter's Oxford-set detective series featuring Inspector Morse. That night he dreamed in Technicolor. He saw the ochre-skinned, scantily clad siren in her black, arrowed stockings.

And in Morse's muddled computer of a mind, that siren took the name of one Joanna Franks . . .

The body of Joanna Franks was found at Duke's Cut on the Oxford Canal at about 5.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 22nd June 1859. At around 10.15 a.m.

on a Saturday morning in 1989 the body of Chief Inspector Morse – though very much alive – was removed to Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital. Treatment for a perforated ulcer was later pronounced successful. As Morse begins his recovery he comes across an account of the investigation and the trial that followed Joanna Franks' death .

. . and becomes convinced that the two men hanged for her murder were innocent .

. . The Wench is Dead is followed by the ninth Inspector Morse book, The Jewel That Was Ours.