Industrial Chemistry by Christopher Roope
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| The Bridge of Sighs: thanks to Flickr |
Author: Christopher Roope
Publisher: Not known
Source book: The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn by Colin Dexter
The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn is the first Morse book I have ever read and it is so different to the TV series. I chose this title of three on the shelf because it’s got the same title as one of the TV episodes. Morse is quite a different character (can you imagine the John Thaw Morse winking?) And the Lewis character is very different too. Also I really cannot imagine our TV heroes going to what sounds like a porn movie. Together.
I went on to read the other two Colin Dexter books we apparently own. Honestly I’m not sure these books are very good. I know they were written in the 1970s, but they are so racist and so astonishingly, depressingly, sexist I found them very hard going. And I do rather wonder if the author actually knew any women at all? To, you know, talk to? Plus, there is lots and lots of drink driving.
Anyway, here we go: Christopher Roope, a chemist, uses a visit to his London publishers as an alibi when one of his colleagues is poisoned. Roope is definitely involved in a lucrative scam to provide advance copies of the exam papers of the Oxford Examination Committee to students based abroad, and after much investigation, he is also implicated in the murder.
I wonder if a publisher would continue with a book commissioned and written before the author was arrested for murder? Maybe if it was science based they wouldn’t care? Maybe any publicity is good publicity? Roope was discussing the final proofs on his visit to London on the day of the murder, so perhaps it wouldn’t be economic to cancel the book.
But who knows? If you are writing a book, though, make sure you aren’t accidentally arrested for murder. Morse seems to suspect everyone in sight, arrest more of them than necessary, and letch over all the women. Oh, the 1970s. No. We don’t miss them at all. Although I did have a very beautiful orange and brown suede mini skirt.
All Morse/Lewis stories are set in Oxford so that’s where I looked for pictures.
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| Radcliffe Camera: thanks to Windows 10 Spotlight Images |
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