Last Seen Wearing

A missing schoolgirl, an Oxford detective, and the uncomfortable reminder that “last seen wearing” is one of the most quietly dreadful phrases in crime fiction.

Last Seen Wearing is Colin Dexter’s second Inspector Morse novel, bringing back the irritable, brilliant, crossword-minded detective to worry away at a disappearance that refuses to sit neatly in the past. Oxford, naturally, supplies the atmosphere: old buildings, sharp minds, academic respectability, and the usual implication that civilisation is only ever one awkward interview away from collapse.

Dexter’s great pleasure is misdirection. Everyone seems to know something, nobody seems to know enough, and Morse proceeds with that familiar mixture of intelligence, impatience, intuition, and personal inconvenience. It is detective fiction with brains, melancholy, and a faint whiff of pipe smoke.

There is a pleasing irony in the setting. Oxford is supposed to represent reason, learning, and polished order. Yet in Dexter’s hands it becomes a place of secrets, evasions, and human messiness, which is probably more realistic, if less useful for the tourist board.

This near fine copy, as sold by Crappy Old Books, is ideal for lovers of classic British crime, Inspector Morse, Oxford mysteries, and investigations where the clues are elegant but the people are not.

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