Inspector Morse creator Colin Dexter dead at 86…
Val McDermid, Lee Child and other crime writers pay tribute to Dexter, who died at his Oxford home on Tuesday.
Colin Dexter, the author behind detective Inspector Morse and his adventures solving mysteries in Oxfordshire, has died at the age of 86, with the top names in crime writing lining up to pay tribute to a “a kind, generous man”.
Colin Dexter: ‘His was the sharpest mind and the biggest heart.’ Photograph: Eamonn McCabe for the Guardian
Dexter’s death at his home in Oxford was announced by his publisher Macmillan on Tuesday. Val McDermid, who was a good friend of Dexter, described him as “a lovely, lovely man” and not as grumpy as his creation – “though he did share Morse’s love of music”.
“Early on in my career I told him I was nervous about how to write police procedurals and he said, ‘Well, my dear, I had written five Morse novels before I had even set foot in a police station.’ He had great sense of humour,” McDermid told the Guardian.
Author Lee Child described Dexter as “revolutionary”. “He wrote a character without any concessions at all to likely popularity – Morse was bad tempered, cantankerous, esoteric and abstruse – and thereby showed us that integrity and authenticity work best,” Child said. “His literary descendants are everywhere. When our genre’s family tree is drawn, he’s the root of a huge portion of it.”
Author Peter James said “all of us who love crime fiction owe Colin Dexter a very great debt”.
Read the full article on The Guardian website…
