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This page lists novels that feature the novelist and academic C.S. Lewis in the role of a fictional amateur detecive.

C.S. Lewis And The Body In The Basement

Kel Richards

2013

Published in the UK in 2015 as The Corpse In The Cellar.

"It’s the summer of 1933, and Oxford don C.S. Lewis, better known to his friends as Jack, is on a walking holiday with his brother Warnie and young friend Tom Morris. When Jack’s wallet is accidentally destroyed, they visit a bank to replenish their funds – and walk straight into the scene of an impossible murder. The victim is in the vault of the bank alone, cut off by brick and steel from the rest of the world. Yet he has been stabbed from behind and the murder weapon has vanished. A ‘locked room’ mystery – which would have baffled the cleverest sleuths of the Golden Age of detective stories – is tackled by the brilliant mind and larger-than-life personality of ‘Jack’ Lewis, beloved creator of Narnia and formidable defender of the Christian faith."

C.S. Lewis And The Country House Murders

Kel Richards

2014

Published in the UK in 2015 as The Country House Murders.

"Tom Morris, busy cataloguing the library of Plumwood Hall, is in a fix. Three days before, a member of the family had keeled over at afternoon tea after eating a slice of fruit cake laced with poison. And Tom has been fingered by the weasel-like Inspector Hyde as chief suspect. The young scholar turns to the only person who can help: his old Oxford tutor, C. S. ('Jack') Lewis. As they investigate, mystery piles on mystery. Why did the victim's husband disappear twelve months before? Why is a strange tattooed foreigner living in a cottage on the moors? Who is the wild man of the woods? And most puzzling of all: how did a massive dose of cyanide get into just one slice of cake? This mind-twisting case has all the hallmarks of a classic Country House Mystery. Woven throughout the story is an engaging conversation about Lewis's Christian worldview."

The Floating Corpse

Kel Richards

2015

Published in the UK in 2016 as The Floating Body.

"The year is 1935. C.S. Lewis (known to his friends as ‘Jack’) and his brother Warren (‘Warnie’) are visiting their young friend Tom Morris at Nesfield Cathedral School. Jack is to be the guest speaker at the school’s speech night. They become eyewitnesses to a murder, an impossible murder. A man is stabbed to death by an unseen assailant, and Tom and Jack see his body fall from the rooftop . . . but the body doesn’t hit the ground until the following day! An entertaining homage to the beloved creator of Narnia – and a celebration of the hugely popular school stories of the early twentieth century – The Floating Body reveals how Jack’s nimble brain again proves invaluable to the police in their attempts to explain the seemingly impossible."

The Sinister Student

Kel Richards

2016

"It’s a Thursday evening in 1936. C.S. Lewis (known to all his friends as Jack) is hosting a gathering of that well-known literary group, The Inklings. Among the regulars are his brother Warnie, J. R. R. Tolkien, Neville Coghill, Hugo Dyson and Adam Fox. Two visitors are also attending – Jack’s old pupil Tom Morris and an undergraduate named Auberon Willesden. The following morning Willesden is found murdered in his room in Magdalen, though both the door and the windows were locked from the inside. And not only has he been murdered: he has been beheaded – and the head is missing! Who killed the student? And why? And, more baffling still – how was it done? It’s a puzzle that will tax the brilliant ingenuity of Jack and his fellow Inklings to the limit."