TV detectives on the page.

I have been watching TV crime dramas since I was knee-high to a bank robber. I’ve taken in everything from Dixon of Dock Green to White House Farm. These days, now that I have 150 TV channels to make my heart glad, I am usually stuck on ITV3, with endless repeats of Poirot, Frost, Midsummer Murders and Morse. Although the BBC has produced many, and American TV even more, you can't beat the ITV series for haunting and stylish theme tunes and opening credits.

I know that authors can have very different attitudes to adaptations of their books. Colin Dexter was obviously happy with having Morse taken out of his hands, since he appeared in every episode, whereas R D Wingfield wasn't so happy with A Touch of Frost. It must be disappointing to find your work ripped up and remodelled by other hands, although I defy any author to say they wouldn't love to be in a position to risk the disappointment.

It has recently occurred to me, tearing myself away from the screen, that though many of my favourites began as novels, I had never read any apart from a few Agatha Christies. So I decided to try a few and see how they compared with the TV series they spawned.

I began with Last Bus to Woodstock, by Colin Dexter, the first novel to introduce Chief Inspector Morse. I don’t expect TV adaptations to stick to the book, so I wasn’t expecting the Morse in the book to be identical to the Morse of John Thaw, and he isn’t. Which is fine. I would have been interested to explore a different character, though I can’t say I like him. The phrase ‘dirty old man’ comes to mind. I didn't particularly like this Morse and there wasn't really anything about poor Lewis to like or dislike.

I found myself put off by the style of writing, though I suppose it's what you would expect of Oxbridge. Do people perambulate? "Impatient at the best of times, and this was not the best of times, he waited restlessly and awkwardly, pacing to and fro, consulting his watch and throwing wicked glances as the portly woman inside the kiosk who appeared ill-equipped to face the triangular threat of the gadgeted apparatus before her, an uncooperative telephone exchange and her own one-handed negotiations with the assorted coinage in her purse." ... And breathe. I can't help thinking of Disraeli's description of Gladstone as being inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity.

The real problem though was the fact that although I had seen the TV version many times (admittedly a totally reconstructed story), the day after finishing the book, I couldn’t actually remember who had done it in the end. Nor did I really care. It petered out into an over-long explanation or who, what, why, when and where, going interminably over ground already covered, and I longed for the improbable simplicity of Poirot herding all his characters into a drawing room and revealing all over a nice tisane. I shall happily go back to watching every rerun of Morse (and Lewis and Endeavour), regardless of their unbelievable plots, but probably not bother with another of the books.

Next was The Killings at Badger’s Drift by Caroline Graham, the first Midsomer Murders. Very different in style, of course, being classified as Cosy Crime and, to my mind, much more readable. The setting is as delightfully absurdly twee at the TV version and the characters are larger than life, their physical appearance described in intricate detail, while their characters and motivations are left comfortably untroubled.

Unlike the Morse book, the TV version of this Midsomer Murder didn’t seem to deviate from the book at all, so I knew who was who and what was coming, which slightly deflated the surprise element. The only thing that did surprise me was the difference between the Barnaby of the book, who is unexpectedly dour and grumpy, and the John Nettles version who seemed to revel in Gothic gore amongst the thatch and shrubberies of rural England.

It did leave me thinking how the world has changed in a relatively short time. The Killings at Badger’s Drift was published in 1987, a world when villagers relied on telephone boxes for communication, policemen recorded details on index cards, and no one had a Facebook profile.

The last book I tried was The Crow Trap by Anne Cleeves, the first Vera Stanhope book. Entirely different. I can’t say if it compares with the TV version because it must be the one episode I have failed to catch, but  I found  the Vera in the book sufficiently similar to Brenda Blethyn's portrayal, except that the book has no reference to her sounding like a boy, whose voice is breaking, strangling a cat in a high wind.

What struck me most was that it was simply an excellent book, defying genre definition as the best crime novels do, knee-deep in atmosphere and perceptive character studies. In fact, as Vera doesn’t actually come into it until about halfway through, I’d forgotten what sort of book I was reading and her sudden appearance startled me. Of the three, it’s the only one that left me wanting to move on to the next book in the series.

Now, back to ITV3, while waiting for the call to adapt one of my books...