Roger Newsome, of the Mimico Newsomes, is a puzzler of Westerly Club who plays hard squash, a charter member of the Toronto Auto Club and the Golf Club. More recently, he is an avid bird-watcher who claims to have spotted the first Inca tern in all of North America.
More than once, he has been a suspect in a Murdoch murder investigation. He annoys Constable Crabtree to the point of hatred: George feels bad even thinking it, but can't pretend it's not true.
Appearances and Mentions
Murdoch and the Cursed Caves (Mention)
Biffers and Blockers (Mention)
Home for the Holidays (Mention)
A Murdog Mystery (Mention)
Weekend at Murdoch's
- Roger Newsome returns as a witness for the Crown in the case against Rex Grey. A hit man assassinates two witnesses set to testify against Grey. The third witness Roger Newsome is placed under protective custody until the trial, under the watch of Crabtree and Higgins at the Windsor House Hotel, being his usual insufferable self. While Crabtree is out getting their dinner and Higgins is asleep on the sofa, Newsome takes the opportunity to leave the hotel to get his haircut as insisted by his sister, only to be shot in the chest by the hit man, despite Murdoch tackling him down. As he lay dying, Newsome instructs Murdoch to tell Crabtree that he had a "bird's eye view"; Murdoch attributed his last words to delusions from blood loss. Without Newsome, Grey will walk free, so Murdoch concocts a plan to capture the hit man by spreading the word via George's friend Miss Louise Cherry that Newsome survived the hit, and with the consent of his sister, poses Roger's corpse riding a wheeled chair. The hit man takes the bait laid in Gazette article but, unfortunately, shoots Newsome's corpse in the chest when Crabtree and Higgins are returning it to the City Morgue and escapes capture. Nonetheless, Murdoch has Newsome's corpse pose again at his presentation of discovering the rare South America bird, with Crabtree speaking for him. The hit man shoots Newsome in the head before being killed by Higgins who got his instruction to capture the assassin alive wrong. Even so, a rival of Newsome's who is obsessed with proving his fraudulence breaks into Newsome's house and discovers that Newsome's bird is stuffed, speculating he had it transported from South America and it died en route. When he shows the bird to Murdoch and Crabtree, they realize that Newsome witnessed something else with his "bird's eye view." Re-examining the place where Newsome faked his bird sighting, Murdoch climbs the tree and spots where Grey discarded his murder weapon, which lead to his prosecution and Crabtree testifying with Roger's bird in hand.
A Case of The Yips
- Roger Newsome returns as a member of the golf club and is once again a suspect.
Murdoch Takes Manhattan
- Roger Newsome of the Mimico Newsomes makes his second appearance as a member of the Toronto Auto Club.
The Death of Dr. Ogden
- Roger Newsome is a member of a group of competitive puzzle solvers. He is a suspect in the murder of Oliver Hoyle after solving a puzzle, published by Edgar Allan Poe many years ago.
Trivia
- Cyrus Lane returns as Roger and Ruth's brother Rupert Newsome in Biffers and Blockers.
- Roger Newsome is a favorite re-occurring character of the MM Writers' Room.
- When asked about killing off one of the Writers' Room's "darlings", Jordan Christianson replied, "The consolation is that we created the character of Roger Newsome’s sister, Ruth, and perhaps she can carry on the torch of the Newsome family. I wouldn’t be surprised if, as we got to know Ruth more, there might be a cousin or something that has a striking resemblance to Roger."
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