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