The Way Through the Woods

Norman Colin Dexter was born in Stamford, Lincolnshire, England on September 29, 1930. He received a bachelor's degree in classics in 1953 and a master's degree in 1958 at from Christ's College, Cambridge University. He taught classics for many years, but growing deafness forced him to retire in 1966. For the next two decades, he was the senior assistant secretary at the Oxford Delegacy of Local Examinations. He retired in 1988 to become a full-time writer.

He was best known for creating the character Chief Inspector Morse. The Inspector Morse series began in 1975 with Last Bus to Woodstock and ended in 1999 with The Remorseful Day. The books were adapted into the television series Inspector Morse, which ran from 1987 to 2000. Dexter won the British Crime Writers' Gold Dagger Award for The Wench is Dead in 1989 and again in 1992 for The Way Through the Woods. He received the organization's lifetime achievement award, the Diamond Dagger, in 1997. He also wrote Cracking Cryptic Crosswords: A Guide to Solving Cryptic Crosswords in 2010. He died on March 21, 2017 at the age of 86.

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