Last Bus to Woodstock

Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge.

Chapters: The Wench Is Dead, Last Bus to Woodstock, the Dead of Jericho, Last Seen Wearing, the Silent World of Nicholas Quinn, Service of All the Dead, Death Is Now My Neighbour, the Remorseful Day, the Jewel That Was Ours, the Daughters of Cain, the Riddle of the Third Mile, the Secret of Annexe 3, the Way Through the Woods.

Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated.

The Wench is Dead is a historical crime novel by Colin Dexter, the eighth novel in the Inspector Morse series. The novel received the Gold Dagger Award in 1989.

In 1859, the body of a young woman was found floating in the Oxford Canal; her death led to a sensational murder trial, and two men were eventually hanged for the murder. In 1989, Inspector Morse is recovering from a bleeding ulcer in Oxford's Radcliffe Hospital. To entertain himself, Morse browses through the books in the hospital's library and comes across an account of the investigation.

The little book called Murder on the Oxford Canal tells the story of the murder of Joanna Franks aboard the canal boat Barbara Bray. Morse is soon convinced that the two men hanged for the crime were innocent and sets out to prove it from the confines of his bed.

The title of the novel comes from Christopher Marlowe's play The Jew of Malta, the following quotation serves as the epigraph to the novel: FRIAR BARNARDINE. Thou hast committed--BARABAS. Fornication: but that was in another country;And besides, the wench is dead.

Colin Dexter based the novel on the 1839 murder of Christina Collins as she travelled the Trent and Mersey Canal at Rugeley, Staffordshire. According to the dedication to the novel, it was Harry Judge, a "lover of canals", who introduced Dexter to the small book The Murder of Christina Collins by John Godwin, a local historian and former ...