A surgeon is found murdered in his garage and the trail leads to a man trying to avenge one of the victim's past misdeeds. It gets complicated, especially at the end. I don't think I'll bother describing the plot in any more detail because it's available on the title page.
I've been working my way through this boxed set of all the episodes and this is the one I believe I've found most satisfying. There is no special scenic attraction, no travel to alien landscapes either. We don't learn more about either Morse or Lewis than we already know, and there's very little in the way of humor. Morse hardly drinks anything. There are no surprises or frills.
What makes this story exceptional is that the plot is relatively straightforward, with the exception of that entangled climactic reveal. There's a professional gloss about it, a restrained skill, from the writing to the performances. And the plot is aimed at a mature audience. There have always been one or two red herrings dragged across the trail but in this episode everyone who seems to have had something to do with the murder actually HAS had something to do with it. No one acts guilty because he smokes a joint in the cellar once in a while, nothing like that.
I'll try to give an example. The murder victim is a doctor who's been receiving those threatening notes that use letters clipped from various sources, then glued onto a sheet of paper. The notes are traced to a wealthy ex bookie whose daughter is now in a terminally vegetative state, possibly due to a sloppy operation performed by the dead man.
We get to know the ex bookie, Brian Cox. He looks like a sleaze bag. Oh, he owns a big house in the country and all that, but he's short and bulky and sports a definitely inadequate mustache. He looks the way we imagine all villains should look.
Yet he turns out to be likable in many ways. There is his love for his comatose daughter for instance. He visits her in hospital daily and reads novel aloud to her unconscious form. He's soft spoken, intelligent. He's polite, generous, and without pretense. He's convincingly innocent in his demeanor. He's not at all a bad guy, although he's still bitter about what he perceives as a botched minor operation.
I still don't know about the ending though. It may not amount to a delusion but it's certainly a snare.
There may be some evolution -- or, at any rate, some change -- in the way John Thaw interprets the character of Morse. This is the first episode of the seventh season and Morse seems to be more emphatic than usual. He was more emotional in the previous two episodes as well. I'm not sure whether the alteration is good or not. At this point, I prefer the earlier lassitudinous Morse to this Morse, who has a tendency to lean over the table in the interrogation room and snarl sarcastically at a suspect. The original Morse was unpleasant enough, which is one of the sources of his charm.
I've been working my way through this boxed set of all the episodes and this is the one I believe I've found most satisfying. There is no special scenic attraction, no travel to alien landscapes either. We don't learn more about either Morse or Lewis than we already know, and there's very little in the way of humor. Morse hardly drinks anything. There are no surprises or frills.
What makes this story exceptional is that the plot is relatively straightforward, with the exception of that entangled climactic reveal. There's a professional gloss about it, a restrained skill, from the writing to the performances. And the plot is aimed at a mature audience. There have always been one or two red herrings dragged across the trail but in this episode everyone who seems to have had something to do with the murder actually HAS had something to do with it. No one acts guilty because he smokes a joint in the cellar once in a while, nothing like that.
I'll try to give an example. The murder victim is a doctor who's been receiving those threatening notes that use letters clipped from various sources, then glued onto a sheet of paper. The notes are traced to a wealthy ex bookie whose daughter is now in a terminally vegetative state, possibly due to a sloppy operation performed by the dead man.
We get to know the ex bookie, Brian Cox. He looks like a sleaze bag. Oh, he owns a big house in the country and all that, but he's short and bulky and sports a definitely inadequate mustache. He looks the way we imagine all villains should look.
Yet he turns out to be likable in many ways. There is his love for his comatose daughter for instance. He visits her in hospital daily and reads novel aloud to her unconscious form. He's soft spoken, intelligent. He's polite, generous, and without pretense. He's convincingly innocent in his demeanor. He's not at all a bad guy, although he's still bitter about what he perceives as a botched minor operation.
I still don't know about the ending though. It may not amount to a delusion but it's certainly a snare.
There may be some evolution -- or, at any rate, some change -- in the way John Thaw interprets the character of Morse. This is the first episode of the seventh season and Morse seems to be more emphatic than usual. He was more emotional in the previous two episodes as well. I'm not sure whether the alteration is good or not. At this point, I prefer the earlier lassitudinous Morse to this Morse, who has a tendency to lean over the table in the interrogation room and snarl sarcastically at a suspect. The original Morse was unpleasant enough, which is one of the sources of his charm.