As the ending approached, I swear my heart raced alarmingly and I almost swooned because this was going to be one of the few times I could keep the damned narrative straight in my mind. (I'd like to give the writer, Alma Cullen, a great big hug.) I mean, the plots have been so convoluted that you generally need to take notes as the characters go through their motions. I want to write stuff like, "Note: Sylvie casts baleful glance at Copely-Barnes when leaving room." Because the resolution so often depends on minor actions that amount to little more than hints at what's going on.
The Master of a college at Oxford sees a young man attacking a colleague, who expires on the spot. Morse and Lewis look into the case and, as usual, uncover all sorts of suspects in addition to some people who SEEM suspicious but may have nothing to do with the initial crime. As they dig into the facts, the two detectives uncover some sort of link between the college, on the one hand, and a nefarious agricultural company on the other. There are sly references to Greepeace. And the Master of the college -- Copely-Barnes -- irregularly receives packages of earthly death in the royal mail -- rotting seafood, skulls, and the like.
One of the reasons I could keep things straight, relatively speaking, was that Alma Cullen has Inspector Morse do something that is unusual for him, though it would have been de rigueur in the investigatory world of Hercule Poirot. Morse and Lewis are strolling along, Morse slouched over with his hands in his trouser pockets, squinting thoughtfully at the floor, when he stops and turns to Lewis. Then he does something extraordinary. He sums up two of the principal characters for us. This is about one third of the way through. And it's fulfilling, like a lecturer beginning a class with a summary of the material they've covered so far. He ought to do it more often, if you ask me.
This episode has another unusual feature -- cross-cutting that heightens the suspense. A man we know only as a heavy is saying something of importance to a dying woman in a hospital. We see Morse entering the hospital to visit the same woman. Cut to the villain leaning over the patient. Cut to Morse walking through the corridor, coming closer. Cut back and forth until Morse sees the heavy at a distance and inquires across the room, "May I have a word?" The villain takes off at a sprint and there follows a tense chase through the hospital basement, as in "Bullett." There's humor as well, though you have to be alert for it. Morse is being chewed out by his superior at the department, who asks out of the blue, "Ever been to Austria?" Morse says, "Once, to Salzburg. For the festival." The chief replies: "Oh? What festival is that?" Cut to Morse's face slowly fading from smile to resignation.
Lewis contributes too. When they first interview the Master, the hoity toity Copely Barnes makes some remark about "taxonomy." "Tax -- what?," exclaims Lewis. "Something to do with stuffing, isn't it?" This Copely-Barnes fellow, by the way, Master or no Master, is one cold fish. He has a flabby nose and the slumped jaw of Walter Matthau but is utterly lacking in anything resembling charm. His every utterance sounds like a snotty note. His wife is Barbara Leigh-Hunt, whom you might remember being raped and strangled on screen in Hitchcock's "Frenzy." I don't think I'll give away the ending. The whole story implodes in the last ten minutes, as it so often does, and everything about the damned environmental movement is jettisoned. The explanation leaps out and bites you on the ankle from an unexpected direction.
The Master of a college at Oxford sees a young man attacking a colleague, who expires on the spot. Morse and Lewis look into the case and, as usual, uncover all sorts of suspects in addition to some people who SEEM suspicious but may have nothing to do with the initial crime. As they dig into the facts, the two detectives uncover some sort of link between the college, on the one hand, and a nefarious agricultural company on the other. There are sly references to Greepeace. And the Master of the college -- Copely-Barnes -- irregularly receives packages of earthly death in the royal mail -- rotting seafood, skulls, and the like.
One of the reasons I could keep things straight, relatively speaking, was that Alma Cullen has Inspector Morse do something that is unusual for him, though it would have been de rigueur in the investigatory world of Hercule Poirot. Morse and Lewis are strolling along, Morse slouched over with his hands in his trouser pockets, squinting thoughtfully at the floor, when he stops and turns to Lewis. Then he does something extraordinary. He sums up two of the principal characters for us. This is about one third of the way through. And it's fulfilling, like a lecturer beginning a class with a summary of the material they've covered so far. He ought to do it more often, if you ask me.
This episode has another unusual feature -- cross-cutting that heightens the suspense. A man we know only as a heavy is saying something of importance to a dying woman in a hospital. We see Morse entering the hospital to visit the same woman. Cut to the villain leaning over the patient. Cut to Morse walking through the corridor, coming closer. Cut back and forth until Morse sees the heavy at a distance and inquires across the room, "May I have a word?" The villain takes off at a sprint and there follows a tense chase through the hospital basement, as in "Bullett." There's humor as well, though you have to be alert for it. Morse is being chewed out by his superior at the department, who asks out of the blue, "Ever been to Austria?" Morse says, "Once, to Salzburg. For the festival." The chief replies: "Oh? What festival is that?" Cut to Morse's face slowly fading from smile to resignation.
Lewis contributes too. When they first interview the Master, the hoity toity Copely Barnes makes some remark about "taxonomy." "Tax -- what?," exclaims Lewis. "Something to do with stuffing, isn't it?" This Copely-Barnes fellow, by the way, Master or no Master, is one cold fish. He has a flabby nose and the slumped jaw of Walter Matthau but is utterly lacking in anything resembling charm. His every utterance sounds like a snotty note. His wife is Barbara Leigh-Hunt, whom you might remember being raped and strangled on screen in Hitchcock's "Frenzy." I don't think I'll give away the ending. The whole story implodes in the last ten minutes, as it so often does, and everything about the damned environmental movement is jettisoned. The explanation leaps out and bites you on the ankle from an unexpected direction.
