The Wench Is Dead

⚖The case for it

A hospital bed holds Morse flat on his back, stewing over a Victorian conviction he's certain fell on the wrong man, and he decides to reopen it. True, Dexter borrowed the invalid-sleuth setup from Josephine Tey, and a crime this old asks a reader to care about people already gone. What holds it together is the working of one restless mind with nothing to do but think. Give him old clippings, ward boredom, and a temper about sloppy conclusions, and he'll pick the record apart line by line.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Dexter lifted the premise from Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time: bedridden detective solves a historical case from documents. Morse without the Oxford legwork is Morse at half power, and a murder from 1859 carries no stakes anyone living can feel. Ingenious, short, and slight; this is a crossword with a corpse in it.

— the honest librarian