The Wench Is Dead — Colin Dexter

Who lies in the grave? An innocent victim? A shoeless temptress?

THE WENCH IS DEAD
Confined to his hospital bed with a temperamental ulcer, an impatient Inspector Morse sees his slow recuperation as a tedious prison term at best. Until he cracks open a dusty tome, Murder on the Oxford Canal, and from the pages of history uncovers a sensational case long forgotten. A young woman was drowned in 1859 , and, after a fleeting trial, two men were hanged for the misdeed. But from all that Morse can gather, they were wrongly accused of rape and murder--and died needlessly for a crime they did not commit. Now his hospital stay will have more than a touch of intrigue, as Inspector Morse intends to piece together the shattered; past-and set the scales of justice to right.

Chief Inspector Morse, Homicide Division, Oxford: a lonely middle-aged bachelor with a taste for Mozart, T. S. Eliot , and pints of bitter--and an obsession with attractive women. As coarse as he is cunning, at times insufferable, and relentlessly inquisitive.