Chief Inspector Morse investigates a long-solved Victorian murder from his hospital bed in the eighth novel in Colin Dexter's Oxford-set detective series. Now reissued with a fresh cover look. That night he dreamed in Technicolor. He saw the ochre-skinned, scantily clad siren in her black, arrowed stockings. And in Morse's muddled computer of a mind, that siren took the name of one Joanna Franks. The body of Joanna Franks was found at Duke's Cut on the Oxford Canal at about 5:30am on Wednesday, June 22, 1859. At around 10:15am on a Saturday morning in 1989, the body of Chief Inspector Morse - though very much alive - was removed to Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital. Treatment for a perforated ulcer was later pronounced successful. As Morse begins his recovery, he comes across an account of the investigation and the trial that followed Joanna Franks' death - and becomes convinced that the two men hanged for her murder were innocent. The Wench is Dead is followed by the ninth Inspector Morse mystery, The Jewel That Was Ours.