ABSTRACT
A popular British television detective series, Inspector Morse, involves the exploits of a thoughtful police officer who, each week, finds himself in search of a murderer. Even on its re-showings, an estimated 18 million British viewers attempt to construct the reasons why a victim has been killed. As an audience we are given many false leads along the way and our task is to work out which of the many possible candidates committed the crime. The series works so well because the author plays with our understanding of the protagonists’ intentions. As the plot unfolds we constantly update our “theories” about likely murderers. In doing so we often become misled about the importance of some of the evidence. We hear, for example, that the wife of the deceased has a lot to gain from her husband’s death, hated him, and has lied to the Inspector. This often leads us to disregard the crucial piece of evidence to implicate another potential perpetrator—after many a false lead we find the wife has been murdered or that she has a solid alibi. It is such “errors” in grasping a plot as it unfolds that will form the basis of this chapter, albeit with a focus on young children’s understanding of much simpler texts.
