Death is Now My Neighbour is the twelfth novel in Colin Dexter's Oxford-set detective series.
As he drove his chief down to Kidlington, Lewis returned the conversation to where it had begun.
'You haven't told me what you think about this fellow Owens – the dead woman's next-door neighbour.'
'Death is always the next-door neighbour,' said Morse sombrely.
The murder of a young woman, a cryptic 'seventeenth-century' love poem, and a photograph of a mystery grey-haired man is more than enough to set Chief Inspector Morse on the trail of a killer.
It's a trail that leads him to Lonsdale College, where the contest between Julian Storrs and Dr Denis Cornford for the coveted position of Master is hotting up.
But then Morse faces a greater, far more personal crisis . . .
Death is Now My Neighbour is followed by the thirteenth and final Inspector Morse book, The Remorseful Day. Inspector Morse takes on another intriguing case in Colin Dexter's detective mystery series. Colin Dexter graduated from Cambridge University in 1953 and moved to Oxford in 1966, where he lived until his death in 2017. His first novel, Last Bus to Woodstock, was published in 1975. There are now thirteen novels in the series, of which The Remorseful Day is, sadly, the last. He won many awards for his novels, including the CWA Silver Dagger twice, and the CWA Gold Dagger for The Wench is Dead and The Way Through the Woods. In 1997 he was presented with the CWA Diamond Dagger for outstanding services to crime literature, and in 2000 was awarded the OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. The Inspector Morse novels have been adapted for the small screen with huge success by Carlton/Central Television, starring John Thaw and Kevin Whately. Spin-offs from Dexter's much-loved novels also include the popular series, Lewis, featuring Morse's former sergeant, Robbie Lewis, and Endeavour, a prequel starring the young Endeavour Morse.
"Traditional crime writing at its best; the kind of book without which no armchair is complete" -The Sunday Times
"No one constructs a whodunit with more fiendish skill than Colin Dexter" -The Guardian
"Dexter has created a giant among fictional detectives" -The Times
"A character who will undoubtedly retain his place as one of the most popular and enduring of fictional detectives" -P. D. James, The Sunday Telegraph
"The writing is highly intelligent, the atmosphere melancholy, the effect haunting" -The Daily Telegraph
"The triumph is the character of Morse" -Times Literary Supplement
"Colin Dexter's superior crime-craft is enough to make lesser practitioners sick with envy" -The Oxford Times
"{Morse is} the most prickly, conceited and genuinely brilliant detective since Hercule Poirot" -The New York Times Book Review
