It would be pleasing to report that later on that August Saturday afternoon the sun broke through the lowering clouds. Yet, as I recall, it didn’t. What I can report is that my first work of fiction, Last Bus to Woodstock, originated on that day, and was finally published by Macmillan in 1975. It featured a detective named Morse. “Just call me Morse!,” as he was to say so many times when some delicious and desirable woman asked him for his Christian name. And that is how I shall refer to him throughout this article.

Which crime writers and what kind of crime-writing may have influenced you?

First memories for me are of Sexton Blake and Tinker; then Edgar Wallace (“King of Thriller Writers”) with his racy and uncluttered style. Next Agatha Christie, pulling the wool over my eyes from page one in a myriad of imaginative and ingenious plots, and almost invariably baffling the delighted reader until the last chapter, last page, last paragraph.

And she more than any other writer determined the direction of my writing, with an emphasis more on “who” perpetrated the dreadful deed, rather than “why” or “how.” For some “dreadful deed” it had to be, since no reader will be overlong enthralled by the theft of a tin of salmon from the supermarket. It was Christie then who motivated my eagerness for surprise endings in the Morse novels. Other writers of course were influential, and like most other teenagers I was a great fan of Father Brown and Sherlock Holmes. But more importantly, I should mention John Dickson Carr (Carter Dickson) with his wonderfully “impossible” locked-room puzzles. I was never able to write such a mystery for Morse to solve, but again it was the “puzzle” element that delighted me so hugely. And it is not unfitting that in Bloody Murder Julian Symons writes of “the puzzles set by Colin Dexter”, gently adding that “perhaps it is churlish to suggest that motives and behavior were a touch nearer reality.” So often have I listened to some of my crime-writing colleagues arguing about the respective merits of “plot” versus “characterization.” But I have always viewed such discussions as somewhat phoney, since the totality of a good story subsumes them both, and the greatest accolade that any of us can hope for is to hear one’s partner’s plea from a room downstairs: “I’ll be up in a few minutes darling. Just let me finish this chapter first.”