The Mystery at Rake Hall (C.S. Lewis Investigates, 1)
Recent years have seen an inundation of historical mystery fiction that feature real literary characters solving murders and other crimes. Jane Austen, Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, among many others, have all been plunged into the world of detection, with mixed degrees of success. The writer and academic C. S. ‘Jack’ Lewis (creator of Narnia) has now joined this elite band of sleuths, and his patron, the debut novelist Maureen Paton, has done a fine job in introducing Lewis to the world of the investigator.
The story’s setting is Oxford in the years after the Second World War. A don at Magdalen College, Jack Lewis is concerned about the absence of one of his students, Susan Temple, from his tutorials. A friend of hers, Lucy Standen, contacts him to seek his assistance about her disappearance; Lucy tells him that Susan had been admitted to Rake Hall, a hostel for females with unwanted pregnancies who have no other means of support, and then had seemingly left without contacting her. Lewis and Lucy resolve on a strategy to find out what has happened to Susan.
The novel is very well-written with wryly amusing observation. The historical context of postwar austerity Oxford is excellent, as is the biographical background for the protagonist C.S. Lewis. There are a few bizarrely dramatic episodes which seem a little off kilter, but these are a minor criticism in an otherwise well-plotted novel. There seems to be scope for more adventures for C.S. Lewis as a rather reluctant and decidedly amateurish but engagingly intelligent investigator.
