The Wench is Dead

<p><b><i>The Wench is Dead</i> </b><b>is the eighth novel in Colin Dexter's Oxford-set detective series</b>.</p><p><i>That night he dreamed in Technicolor. He saw the ochre-skinned, scantily clad siren in her black, arrowed stockings. And in Morse's muddled computer of a mind, that siren took the name of one Joanna Franks . . .</i></p><p>The body of Joanna Franks was found at Duke's Cut on the Oxford Canal at about 5.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 22nd June 1859.</p><p>At around 10.15 a.m. on a Saturday morning in 1989 the body of Chief Inspector Morse – though very much alive – was removed to Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital. Treatment for a perforated ulcer was later pronounced successful.</p><p>As Morse begins his recovery he comes across an account of the investigation and the trial that followed Joanna Franks' death . . . and becomes convinced that the two men hanged for her murder were innocent . . .</p><p><i>The Wench is Dead</i> is followed by the ninth Inspector Morse book, <i>The Jewel That Was Ours</i>.</p>