Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.
I’m featuring Death is Now My Neighbour by Colin Dexter, one of the Inspector Morse novels. I’ve read this recently for my 20 Books of Summer Challenge.
Book Beginning:
From the Prolegomenon
‘What time do you call this, Lewis?’.
‘The missus’s fault. Not like her to be late with the breakfast.’
Chapter 1
It is perhaps unusual to begin a tale of murder with a reminder to the reader of the rules governing conditional sentences in a language that is incontrovertibly dead. In the present case, however, such a course appears not wholly inappropriate.
Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.
Page 56:
In his earlier years Geoffrey Owens had been an owl, preferring to pursue whatever tasks lay before him into the late hours of the night, often through into the still, small hours. But now, in his mid-forties, he had metamorphosed into a lark, his brain seeming perceptibly clearer and fresher in the morning.
Description from Goodreads:
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 . . .
More than enough to set Chief Inspector E. Morse on the trail of a killer.
And 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 . . .
~~~
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, the penultimate book in the series and hope to write more about it in a separate post. Morse is nearing retirement and he is not a well man – his drinking is now causing him problems, enough to make him go to the doctor, who diagnoses diabetes. But does Morse follow his doctor’s advice?
This is the novel in which Morse’s first name is revealed – these days it’s not the revelation for the current readers as it was for its first readers.
What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?
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