Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death - (Grantchester) by James Runcie (Paperback)

About the Book

Detective Sidney Chambers inquires into a Cambridge solicitor suicide, a scandalous jewelry theft at a New Year's Eve dinner party, the unexplained death of a jazz promoter's daughter, and a shocking art forgery in this new detective series.

Book Synopsis

The first of the Grantchester Mysteries, and inspiration for the PBS/Masterpiece television series, finds Vicar Sidney Chambers beginning his career, as both a spiritual leader and a detective.

It is 1953, the coronation year of Queen Elizabeth II . Sidney Chambers, vicar of Grantchester and honorary canon of Ely Cathedral, is a thirty-two-year-old bachelor. Tall, with dark brown hair, eyes the color of hazelnuts, and a reassuringly gentle manner, Sidney is an unconventional clerical detective. He can go where the police cannot.

Together with his roguish friend, inspector Geordie Keating, Sidney inquires into the suspect suicide of a Cambridge solicitor, a scandalous jewelry theft at a New Year's Eve dinner party, the unexplained death of a jazz promoter's daughter, and a shocking art forgery that puts a close friend in danger. Sidney discovers that being a detective, like being a clergyman, means that you are never off duty, but he nonetheless manages to find time for a keen interest in cricket, warm beer, and hot jazz-as well as a curious fondness for a German widow three years his junior.

With a whiff of Agatha Christie and a touch of G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown, The Grantchester Mysteries introduces a wonderful new hero into the world of detective fiction.

Review Quotes

"James Runcie has written the coziest of cozy murder mysteries. Taken individually, each of these clerical whodunits poses a clever puzzle for armchair detectives. Viewed as a collective study of British life as it was lived when Elizabeth II first ascended the throne, these stories present a consistently charming and occasionally cutting commentary on 'a postwar landscape full of industry, promise and concrete." --Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

"The author is a master wordsmith, writing in delicate, lyrical prose . . . Readers definitely are in for a treat when they meet this gentlemanly but worldly man of the cloth. I cannot but hope there are many more cases in his future." --Mystery Scene

"Chambers turns out to be a winning clergyman-sleuth, and Runcie's literary authority is repeatedly demonstrated in the construction of his elegant tales . . . There is no denying the winning charm of these artfully fashioned mysteries." --Independent

About the Author

James Runcie is an award-winning filmmaker and novelist. Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death, the first in the Grantchester Mysteries series, was published in 2012, inspiring Grantchester, a primetime PBS series starring James Norton as Sidney Chambers. Other books in the series include Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil, Sidney Chambers and The Forgiveness of Sins, and Sidney Chambers and The Dangers of Temptation. James Runcie lives in London and Edinburgh.