House of Ghosts - An Inspector Morse Mystery

Synopsis

Since Oxford undergraduate days Morse has regarded theatre director Laurence Baxter as the only truly evil man he has ever met. So what happens when, twenty-odd years later, Morse finds Baxter at the centre of a murder case that involves the on-stage death of a young actress?

Our Review:

Anne Morley-Priestman - 31 August 2010

Actors playing other actors in another play taking place on the stage-within-a-stage tend to be problematic in the theatre. To be blunt about it, they’re not always credible (I except The Dresser and Noises Off). Add in the director of the play within a play materialising from somewhere in the stalls, not to mention loud interjections from the auditorium of both the fictional and actual theatres, and you can have a thoroughly unsettled audience before any plot starts to reveal itself.

The plot in the case of House of Ghosts involves the cerebral detective Morse, central character in Colin Dexter’s novels and the television series based on them. Some of these television episodes were written by Alma Cullen, who has devised a story in which the Morse of 1987 is confronted with people from his undergraduate days some 20 years previously. One student thespian has become a high-flying Catholic priest; another is a once-renowned theatre director look...

Read more of the review

Latest User Review

Roger Risborough - 6 September 2010:

HOUSE OF GHOSTS - RICHMOND "This dog sounds like it hasn't got a clue (6,3)". Morse minus John Thaw and Kevin Whateley, silenced of Barrington's Pheloung's score and distanced from its Oxford settings, equals, well, Scooby Doo. Sorry, but this was VERY disappointing - not helped by Colin Baker borrowing more from Terry Scott than Mr Thaw. That idiosyncratic take on Morse bellowing "Lyoowis!" sounded just like Terry calling for June. This diminishes, rather than enhances, the original. Not so much "morse" as a downright "SOS"....

Read more and add your own review