The Problem of the Surly Servant

by Roberta Rogow

Overview

At Oxford, a rash of crime puts Dodgson under suspicion of murder

The world of academia is hardly a hotbed of crime. And although scholars at the University of Oxford may debate the assassination of Caesar or the execution of Socrates, a modern criminal has no place within the school’s walls. And yet, as the reverend Charles Dodgson is horrified to learn, there is a thief within the college of Christ Church. The wine cellar has been ransacked, the faculty has been robbed, and a female student is being threatened by a blackmailer. It falls to Dodgson—better known as Lewis Carroll—to unmask the thief with the help of his dear friend Arthur Conan Doyle.

The campus crimes quickly escalate until the university’s hallowed halls are stained with blood. When suspicion of murder falls at Dodgson’s feet, it is up to Doyle to clear his friend’s name—with the brilliance and style befitting the man who created Sherlock Holmes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781453205907
Publisher:	MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Publication date:	10/14/2014
Series:	The Charles Dodgson and Arthur Conan Doyle Mysteries , #5
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	296
Sales rank:	308,642
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Roberta Rogow (b. 1942) is an author of speculative fiction. A professional children’s librarian, she began writing fan fiction in 1973 after a love of Star Trek lured her to her first science fiction convention. After several years publishing stories in fanzines, she founded Grip, a multimedia zine focusing on Star Trek and other science fiction, in 1978. After retiring the zine in 1996, Rogow published her first novel, The Problem of the Missing Miss (1998), which began the four-volume Charles Dodgson and Arthur Conan Doyle Mysteries.

Rogow’s most recent novel is Murders in Manatas (2013). She is also a musician who has been playing sci-fi-inspired folk music since the 1970s.
Roberta Rogow (b. 1942) is an author of speculative fiction. A professional children’s librarian, she began writing fan fiction in 1973 after a love of Star Trek lured her to her first science fiction convention. After several years publishing stories in fanzines, she founded Grip, a multimedia zine focusing on Star Trek and other science fiction, in 1978. After retiring the zine in 1996, Rogow published her first novel, The Problem of the Missing Miss (1998), which began the four-volume Charles Dodgson and Arthur Conan Doyle Mysteries.

Rogow’s most recent novel is Murders in Manatas (2013). She is also a musician who has been playing sci-fi-inspired folk music since the 1970s.

Editorial Reviews

Friction between town and gown simmers at the center of Rogow's (The Problem of the Evil Editor) latest and entertaining literary-historical mystery. Young Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, not yet famous for his Sherlock Holmes stories (it's the spring of 1886), and his wife, Touie, interrupt a trip to northern England to aid their friend, Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), when the Christ Church don becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a surly, thieving, blackmailing Oxford University scout (servant). Confined to his college by Dean Liddell, the father of Alice and her sisters for whom the celebrated author wrote his classic children's books Dodgson must try to solve the crime indirectly, largely from police reports and Conan Doyle and Touie's own investigation. In clear, sometimes lyrical prose, the author paints an engaging and palpable picture of Victorian Oxford with its complex society of dons, undergraduates, scouts and townspeople. Rogow is particularly good at dramatizing the status of women as university students. This solid social background tends to overshadow the mystery solving, but the main pleasure, as always in this series, lies in the interaction between the two fascinating principals, whose images, divided by a cropped photo of a servant setting a tea tray on a table near an empty bed, appear on the singularly unattractive jacket. A period picture of Oxford would have been a better choice. (Aug. 27) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Charles Dodgson publicly argues with a man suspected of a series of thefts at Christ Church College in Oxford. When the man is then murdered, Dodgson stands suspect. He and Arthur Conan Doyle set out to prove otherwise. A solid addition to the literate historical series. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

The Reverend Charles Dodgson, a don at Oxford University, is still quartered at the Christ Church house on campus, and still writing his Alice stories (The Problem of the Evil Editor, 2000, etc.) as Lewis Carroll. When he gets a visit from fellow-author Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle and his wife Touie, they're just in time to take an interest in some strange events on campus. James Ingram, one of the house servants, has been found dead in the waters under Magdalene Bridge. There's no shortage of suspects, since Ingram was a blackmailer as well as a petty thief-all to serve his student patron at Oxford's new Lady Margaret Hall for women. Once a maid (not a governess, as she claims) for the wealthy Berwick family, for whom Ingram was a butler, Dianna, nee Daisy, was appalled by his threat to reveal her humble past employment as well as his possession of a nude photograph of her taken by the Reverend Dodgson when she was six. The three students who carted Ingram's body from the river are also under suspicion, along with the august Berwick family. Inspector Truscott is unimpressed by Dr. Doyle's detecting skills, but it's Doyle's take on the circumstances surrounding the fatality that winds up the case. A lively start all too soon bogged down in a torrent of minutiae. Despite the sluggish pace, though, Rogow provides an interesting look at the manners and mores of the academic world of the Victorians.

Kirkus Reviews