Colin Dexter

British author best known for the Inspector Morse mystery novels.

Colin Dexter (born September 29, 1930, Stamford, Lincolnshire, England—died March 21, 2017, Oxford) was a British author who wrote 13 acclaimed mystery novels featuring the erudite and curmudgeonly Chief Inspector Morse; the novels inspired the popular British television series Inspector Morse (1987–2000) and two spin-off series.

Dexter earned (1953) a bachelor’s degree and (1958) a master’s degree in classics from Christ’s College, Cambridge. He taught classics at secondary schools until his growing deafness made that impossible, and thereafter (1966–88) he worked at the University of Oxford Delegacy of Local Examinations, which set examinations for local secondary schools. Dexter began writing his first mystery novel to alleviate boredom on a rainy family vacation in the early 1970s.

His novels feature Morse, who is given to theorizing complex solutions to the crimes he has set out to understand, and his more practical and long-suffering partner, Detective Sgt. Lewis. The characters make their first appearance in Last Bus to Woodstock (1975). The crimes in the Inspector Morse novels are convoluted and the plots replete with misdirection.¹