Remembering Colin

DEBORAH CROMBIE: This is not at all what I intended to write about today. But I've just heard that Colin Dexter has died and I can't NOT write about him. Or Inspector Morse. Endeavor Morse, as we find out at the very end of the series!

Colin was eighty-six, so it's not as if his death was unexpected, but still... For me, his loss is a passing of a part of my creative life--and the personal loss of a man I knew and liked. 

When I went to Oxford for the first time it was not long after the publication of the first Morse novel, LAST BUS TO WOODSTOCK, in 1975, and I remember watching for street signs and looking at maps, imprinting the locations from the book. I'm sure I was influenced in my writing more than I realized by Dexter's Morse, the quintessential irascible detective, lover of opera, crosswords, good whisky, women, and wine. 

I know that when I wrote an academic mystery, I set it in Cambridge rather than my much-loved Oxford, because I didn't dare tread on Morse territory.

Colin (center) with John Thaw and Kevin Whately.

Colin Dexter was many things. A skilled novelist, a master plotter, a creator of characters that will long outlive him. But he was also a very kind man.

I met Colin for the first time in the mid-nineties, at a Mystery Weekend at St. Hilda's College, Oxford, where he was a keynote speaker. Some of you may know that Colin was very deaf (in fact, one of my favorite Morse novels is The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn, about the murder of a deaf Oxford don) and that I also am completely deaf in one ear. That weekend, I was a newly minted novelist, but Colin and I formed a bond over our lack of hearing, and whenever I met him afterwards, he never failed to remember me. 

The last time I saw Colin was perhaps three or four years ago. I was waiting in the reception area of our mutual publisher in London, when who came in but Colin! He was alone, and seemed quite frail, and he was told rather brusquely by the receptionist  to take a seat and wait. When I went over to him and introduced myself, he lit up. He not only remembered me because I was deaf, but he knew my name and my books. I was so flattered, and touched. When we were both ushered up to the inner sanctum, I helped organize tea for him and we had a nice chat.

I'm so sorry that I did not meet him again. But Morse lives on, in print and on film, and if you watch very carefully, so does Colin, in his walk-on cameos in every episode of the series.

There will be many tributes, and recitations of Colin's honors, so well deserved. But, for now, I am going to go read a book, one set in Oxford, and remember the man I knew... 

Reds and readers, how will you remember Colin?

Soundtracks

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Last week I was re-watching the first season of Endeavor on Masterpiece Mystery, in anticipation of Season 2 beginning on Sunday night, and as I listened to the opening bars of Barrington Pheloung's gorgeous, evocative score, it occurred to me that I could not imagine Morse, Inspector Lewis, or Endeavor without that signature music. (If you are Masterpiece Mystery fans, you're hearing it in your head right now.)

And then I started to think about all the movies and television shows that are inseparable from their soundtracks. Just start with John Williams: Can you imagine Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Harry Potter (just to pick a few plums from the Williams catalog) without the music? What about Star Trek without Michael Giacchino's score? The X-Files without Mark Snow's eerie whistled opening?

I loved Gabriel Yared's score for The English Patient so much that I tried to learn to play the piano. (And inflicted the same on poor Gemma, who has, at least, had marginally better results.)

Or if you're old enough (and will admit to being old enough,) just think of Rawhide, or the Andy Griffith Show. (I dare you to get that one out of your head...)

As writers, we try to convey all the senses because those cues pull the reader into the story, but I think music is the hardest thing to describe in words. Most of the time we settle for trying to portray the feelings that music invokes, and perhaps we forget just how effectively music gives us mood and emotion.

So, REDS and readers, what springs to your minds when you think of movies or television shows that just wouldn't be the same without their theme music? (No musicals allowed! That's a different challenge altogether!)

(Oh, and by the way, isn't Shaun Evans, who plays the young Morse in Endeavor, fab???)

And just in case you've never heard the theme from Morse, here it is.