The Wench is Dead: Colin Dexter

The Wench is Dead is the eighth novel in Colin Dexter`s Oxford-set detective series.

That night he dreamed in Technicolor. He saw the ochre-skinned, scantily clad siren in her black, arrowed stockings. And in Morse`s muddled computer of a mind, that siren took the name of one Joanna Franks…

The body of Joanna Franks was found at Duke`s Cut on the Oxford Canal at about 5.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 22nd June 1859.

At around 10.15 a.m. on a Saturday morning in 1989 the body of Chief Inspector Morse - though very much alive - was removed to Oxford`s John Radcliffe Hospital. Treatment for a perforated ulcer was later pronounced successful.

As Morse begins his recovery he comes across an account of the investigation and the trial that followed Joanna Franks` death… and becomes convinced that the two men hanged for her murder were innocent…