Crosswords? Well, Morse could almost invariably finish The Times crossword at breakneck speed (he was considerably quicker than I am), and in his vainer moments he would claim that solving that newspaper’s puzzle was the veritable benchmark of mental acumen and flexibility. Sometimes, however, he could cheat just a little. In The Wench Is Dead, for example, we read that Morse “bought The Times at the bookstall, got a seat at the rear of the train and had solved the puzzle in ten minutes before reaching Didcot. Except for one clue… He quickly wrote in a couple of bogus letters in case any fellow passengers were waiting to be impressed.” He did try once to interest Lewis in the delights of the cryptic crossword, but in vain.

Wagner? I attempted perhaps rather laboriously to explain Morse's passion for music. It would have been very difficult for him to explain such a passion to Lewis, just as it is for me here to put these things into words. Much better, surely, for both of us to feel them? Once, in a car, Morse betrayed an impatient arrogance when Lewis mistook an aria from Tosca sung by Maria Callas for a lively tune from Cats. But, then, Morse was a musical snob who would have had no sympathy whatsoever with a woman I knew who had seen The Sound of Music on fifteen occasions. Such contempt was not Morse’s most attractive trait, was it? But perhaps we should forgive him.

The poets? Certainly Morse spent much time reading poetry with deep and abiding love, both the English and the classical poets. Occasionally read them aloud, too, as in The Remorseful Day, when, seated one summer evening in the Victoria Arms with a pint of beer on the table in front of him, he gazed westward toward a miraculous sunset and recited part of a poem by Housman-a poet who, like Morse, failed to get a degree from St. John’s College, Oxford.

Ensanguining the skies

How heavily it dies

Into the west away;

Past touch and sight and sound,

Not further to be found,

How hopeless under ground

Falls the remorseful day.

(More Poems, XVI)

Unusually for the melancholy Housman, this poem has an almost playful touch. The remorse here is for unfulfilled intention, an emotion experienced by most of us every day. But not by John Thaw, perhaps, whose life afforded a fulfillment of his ambitions and a manifestation of his extraordinary talents.

Did John Thaw ever say anything to you that you particularly remember?

Let me be honest. No one has ever asked me that question, but I would like to answer it. He told me that he enjoyed playing Inspector Morse more than any other role, and for me that was an unforgettable compliment. I can just about understand why that great actor thought so. For me John Thaw was Inspector Morse. And in my will I have specifically stated that for as long as the copyright on the character remains with me, I shall permit no other actor to follow him. No other actor could follow him.

John Harvey was born in London in 1938. After studying at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and at Hatfield Polytechnic, he took his master’s degree in American Studies at the University of Nottingham, where he taught film and literature as a part-time lecturer between 1980 and 1986.

Harvey taught English and drama in secondary schools for twelve years. Since then, he has lived primarily by his writing, and has more than one hundred published books to his credit. After what he calls his apprentice years, writing paperback fiction for both adults and teenagers, he is now principally known as a writer of crime fiction, with the first of the Charlie Resnick novels, Lonely Hearts, being named by The Times (London) as one of the 100 most notable crime novels of the last century. Flesh and Blood, the first of three novels featuring Frank Elder, was awarded both the British Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger and the US Barry Award in 2004. His books have won two major prizes in France, the Grand Prix du Roman Noir Etranger for Cold Light in 2000 and the Prix du Polar Européen for Ash & Bone in 2007. In 2007, he was the recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in crime writing.

Harvey has written many scripts for television and radio, specializing in adapting his and others’ work. His radio work includes dramatizations of two Graham Greene novels, The End of the Affair and The Heart of the Matter, as well as The Frederica Quartet by A. S. Byatt and (with Shelly Silas) The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott.

After living in Nottingham for many years, Harvey now lives in north London with his partner and their young daughter.

To the memory of two fine professionals, Laurence James and Dulan Barber, without whom it is doubtful Charlie Resnick would ever have existed-and for Marian Wood, who, as my US editor at Henry Holt, was responsible for keeping Charlie, and me, more or less in line for a good-a very good-ten years. Thanks, Marian.

That I became a writer at all-and that Charlie Resnick, therefore, was brought into existence-was largely due to a series of convenient accidents. You see, I had never harbored any ambitions to be a writer, at least not a fiction writer, and until the time that my first book (Avenging Angel, New English Library, 1975, under the pen name Thom Ryder) was published, I had made no attempts in that direction: no early masterpieces stored beneath the bed or in an adoring parent’s drawer, no prize-winning contributions to some children’s short-story competition. I had, it’s true, both at secondary school and then again at college, edited a couple of student newspapers, gracing them with the occasional review or what I saw as a scathing muckraking exposé, but this was journalism, nothing more or less, and although, looking back, I’m somewhat bemused to understand why, it never occurred to me that it might be my profession. No. I was destined to be a teacher, an inspirational-well, I was still young-teacher of English and drama to whatever hapless eleven through eighteen year olds found themselves seated before me.

The twelfth year of this career found me in Stevenage, a “new town” an hour’s drive north of London, and I was beginning to feel more than a tad restless. And here, as chance would have it, I resumed close acquaintance with a former college friend, Laurence James, who, sadly, was to die all too early, in the year 2000, when not yet sixty. Laurence had been assiduously working his way up in the book trade-first as a bookseller, then as an editor, and finally as an author. He was living not far from Stevenage, close enough for me to make frequent visits, during which I complained about the nature of my present lot and observed with no little envy the comparatively pleasant life of a fulltime writer. Laurence, it seemed-I later learned the truth to be both more arduous and demanding-would rise in his own good time and, after a leisurely breakfast, make his way into his office, where he would sit behind his desk for an hour or so before pausing for the first of several coffee breaks that would occur throughout the day. And at the end of each of those days, two or three thousand words of manuscript would have been created with apparent ease. No bells sounding at forty-minute intervals to announce a new class and a change of lesson, no recalcitrant or obstreperous youths to chivvy along or bully into submission: just your own quiet room with a stereo and coffee machine close to hand and, in Laurence’s case, an intelligent and lovely wife, who, having shipped the kids off to school, was most likely working on a novel in a room of her own.