The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn
Cover of the first edition
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| Author | Colin Dexter |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Inspector Morse series, #3 |
| Genre | crime novel |
| Publisher | Macmillan |
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Publication date
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5 May 1977 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 254p. |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 6080737 |
| Preceded by | Last Seen Wearing |
| Followed by | Service of All the Dead |
The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn is a crime novel by Colin Dexter, the third novel in Inspector Morse series.
The Oxford Foreign Examinations Syndicate runs school exams in the Persian Gulf and other places with a British connection. The Secretary Dr Bartlett and Mr Roope, a chemistry don and a member of the committee, disagree about the appointment of a new member of staff. Roope gets his way and Nicholas Quinn, a deaf man who lipreads, gets the job.
When Quinn is found murdered in his maisonette, all the staff are under suspicion. There is Bartlett, his deputy Ogleby and the attractive Monica Height, who has liaisons with some of the others - especially young Donald Martin. Strangely, nearly all of them, including Quinn, appear to have tickets for The Nymphomaniac at Studio 2 in Walton Street on the afternoon of the murder. When later Ogleby is himself found murdered, a neat drawing of Quinn’s ticket is found in his diary.
Morse tries to deduce which of the others is the murderer but keeps getting it wrong. An intrigue involving wealthy Arabs and prior knowledge of exam papers is clearly the cause, and Quinn had found out about it and paid for it with his life.
The novel was adapted as the second episode of the Inspector Morse TV series in 1987. The adaptation remained faithful to the source material, the only noticeable changes being the omission of much of the material prior to Quinn's murder (the television version begins with him already employed by the syndicate), a subplot concerning Bartlett having a schizophrenic son, and the film the characters viewed being changed to Last Tango in Paris.
In 1996, a BBC Radio 4 adaptation was released that was dramatised by Guy Meredith and directed by Ned Chaillet.
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