Last Seen Wearing (Dexter novel)

A man, later known to be Donald Phillipson, goes for an interview in Oxford for the job of headmaster of a school, later known to be the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School in Oxford. At the bus stop a girl gets into conversation with him and later seduces him. She turns out to be a girl from the school, Valerie Taylor, and a year later she goes missing.

Two years after that Inspector Morse picks up the case following a road accident in which Chief Inspector Ainley, who had been investigating the mystery, was killed. A letter arrives apparently from Valerie, but Morse is convinced Valerie must be dead and tries to find out what happened on the day she disappeared. She had gone home from school for lunch that day, and was apparently last seen on her return journey by a lollipop man (street crossing guard), carrying a bag and wearing her distinctive school blouse and red socks. Morse suspects she was pregnant and that she had been sent off for an abortion.

The plot thickens when Reginald Baines, another teacher at the school, is found murdered at his house near Oxford Station. Two suspicious characters had been seen near the house – Donald Philipson's wife, wearing a distinctive cherry coloured coat, and David Acum, a French teacher who had taught Valerie's last lesson.

• 1976, London: Macmillan ISBN 0-333-19245-1, Pub date April 1976, Hardback

In 1994 the BBC Radio 4 play Last Seen Wearing was dramatised from the novel by Guy Meredith and directed by Ned Chaillet. It starred John Shrapnel as Morse and Robert Glenister as Lewis[1]

• Bishop, David, The Complete Inspector Morse: From the Original Novels to the TV Series London: Reynolds & Hearn (2006) ISBN 1-905287-13-5
• Bird, Christopher, The World of Inspector Morse: A Complete A-Z Reference for the Morse Enthusiast Foreword by Colin Dexter, London: Boxtree (1998) ISBN 0-7522-2117-5