The story is up to snuff, with perhaps a bit more subtle comedy and a little more emotional engagement from Morse. Morse's old room mate at college, Daniel Massey, hasn't kept in touch but one day rings up Morse and arranges for lunch. Massey's conversation is elliptical. He seems to want to say something but can't bring himself to do it.
He's soon found dead in a hotel room, drugged and electrocuted. The search leads Morse and Sergeant Lewis to a cricket team led by another old friend of Morse's. This gray-haired, gimpy old friend picked up the habit of calling Morse by the nickname of "Pagan" because Morse had refused to reveal his Christian name at college. Lewis is infiltrated into the team to learn what he can. Lewis takes advantage of his incognito to call Morse "Pagan" once or twice, while Morse must wrinkle his nose in disgust and absorb it.
I grew to like Lewis in this episode. He has a secret meeting with Morse in the john. When it's over, Morse tell him he can leave. But Lewis doesn't want to leave until he -- gesturing towards one of the stalls -- "Unh, you know." It develops that at home Lewis refers to his excretory functions by numbers, just as we did when we were kids in New Jersey. I never realize they did that in Britain. The revelation of this lexical concordance left me with a warm glow, which I had a chance to ponder later during number one. There's another reason I grew fond of Lewis. For the first time I noticed that when he comes up with his big smile over that big chin, he looks quite a lot like Stan Laurel.
The main babe in the case is Daniel Massey's wife, Sharon Maughan. Now, in most instances, the women that Morse finds attractive are unexceptional in appearance. That's okay with me. But Maughan is tall, with a long mane of floppy red hair, and looks striking. She's more than usually affectionate towards Morse too. He finds this pretty satisfying but we -- and poor Morse -- find out that her taste runs to extravagant mesomorphs.
He's soon found dead in a hotel room, drugged and electrocuted. The search leads Morse and Sergeant Lewis to a cricket team led by another old friend of Morse's. This gray-haired, gimpy old friend picked up the habit of calling Morse by the nickname of "Pagan" because Morse had refused to reveal his Christian name at college. Lewis is infiltrated into the team to learn what he can. Lewis takes advantage of his incognito to call Morse "Pagan" once or twice, while Morse must wrinkle his nose in disgust and absorb it.
I grew to like Lewis in this episode. He has a secret meeting with Morse in the john. When it's over, Morse tell him he can leave. But Lewis doesn't want to leave until he -- gesturing towards one of the stalls -- "Unh, you know." It develops that at home Lewis refers to his excretory functions by numbers, just as we did when we were kids in New Jersey. I never realize they did that in Britain. The revelation of this lexical concordance left me with a warm glow, which I had a chance to ponder later during number one. There's another reason I grew fond of Lewis. For the first time I noticed that when he comes up with his big smile over that big chin, he looks quite a lot like Stan Laurel.
The main babe in the case is Daniel Massey's wife, Sharon Maughan. Now, in most instances, the women that Morse finds attractive are unexceptional in appearance. That's okay with me. But Maughan is tall, with a long mane of floppy red hair, and looks striking. She's more than usually affectionate towards Morse too. He finds this pretty satisfying but we -- and poor Morse -- find out that her taste runs to extravagant mesomorphs.