In 1866, amateur detective Charles Lenox returns to his alma mater, Oxford, to search for a missing student which leads him to a much older, uglier mystery.

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...