The Mystery at Rake Hall: C.S. Lewis investigates (The Times Best Crime Fiction of 2025 So Far)

Maureen Paton

• A brilliantly clever and satisfying conceit, in which C.S. Lewis, world-famous from his wartime adult writings, gets involved in the insalubrious side of austerity Oxford, while in the background he starts work on the Narnia series.
• As well as Lewis, his friend Dorothy Sayers appears, and the whole novel is a clever interbraiding of fact and fiction.
• The novel’s Rake Hall – a workhouse for pregnant working-class single mothers – really existed, and the author’s mother was sequestered there while pregnant with her.
• The first in a series of historical crime novels