Midsomer Murders

Written in Blood, according to one reader, deals with child abuse, insanity and obsessional love, which is darker ground than the cosy village murders the television series made famous. Caroline Graham's Barnaby novels are reportedly sharper and less comfortable than the programme they launched. Readers single out her narration for its wit and social observation, and her characters for their nuance and believability. That is the texture a mystery on the page can offer: the wry commentary, the inner lives of suspects, and the slow build of a village's hidden cruelties. Screen time tends to compress this into plot. The books also give you a complete, contained world. There are only seven Barnaby novels, and two of them, A Place of Safety and A Ghost in the Machine, were never filmed. Longtime viewers can still find Barnaby cases in them that they have never seen solved.

Only five of Caroline Graham's seven Barnaby novels reached the screen, as the first episodes of 1997 and 1998: The Killings at Badger's Drift, Written in Blood, Death of a Hollow Man, Faithful unto Death and Death in Disguise, the last episode drawn from her work. A Place of Safety and A Ghost in the Machine were never adapted. After that the series went fully original, with many screenwriters writing a very long run of episodes. Anthony Horowitz and Douglas Watkinson wrote the early adaptations. As far as is known, those early episodes are largely faithful. Nothing confirms a changed ending, and one reviewer says Written in Blood follows the novel closely apart from minor details. The same reviewer suggests that Joyce Barnaby is far more involved on screen, sometimes seeming partly responsible for solving the case, where the novel gives her a smaller role. The reported difference in tone is larger. Readers describe the books as darker and less cosy, with witty narration and nuanced characters. They say the series leans towards lurid plots and melodrama. These are individual reader impressions rather than established fact.