Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil: Grantchester Mysteries 3

by James Runcie

Overview

The third book in The Grantchester Mystery Series, and the inspiration for the primetime PBS/Masterpiece television series, Grantchester.

It is the 1960s and Canon Sidney Chambers is enjoying his first year of married life with his German bride Hildegard. But life in Grantchester rarely stays quiet for long.

Our favourite clerical detective soon attempts to stop a serial killer who has a grievance against the clergy; investigates the disappearance of a famous painting after a distracting display of nudity by a French girl in an art gallery; uncovers the fact that an 'accidental' drowning on a film shoot may not have been so accidental after all; and discovers the reasons behind the theft of a baby from a hospital in the run-up to Christmas, 1963.

In the meantime, Sidney wrestles with the problem of evil, attempts to fulfil the demands of Dickens, his faithful Labrador, and contemplates, as always, the nature of love.

The third in 'The Grantchester Mysteries' series – six detective novels spanning thirty years of British history – these four longer stories are guaranteed to delight the many fans of Canon Sidney Chambers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608199525
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	06/10/2014
Series:	Grantchester , #3
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	246,453
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

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.

Editorial Reviews

04/28/2014
Character is the strong suit of the four cases, all set in the early 1960s, that fill Runcie’s third collection featuring Canon Sidney Chambers (after 2013’s Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night). In the title story, the reader learns that the Anglican minister has recently gotten married to a German woman, in the process becoming “a living embodiment of post-war reconciliation.” Meanwhile, someone is targeting Sidney’s colleagues in Grantchester, leaving knife wounds meant to simulate the mark of the beast. A daring art theft is the subject of “Female, Nude,” but the high point is “Death by Water,” in which Sidney is hired to play Reverend Venables in a film adaptation of Dorothy Sayers’s The Nine Tailors. Despite his awkwardness on the set, Sidney manages to solve an apparently accidental drowning. Runcie may be no G.K. Chesterton when it comes to plotting, but cozy fans will be pleased. Agent: David Godwin, David Godwin Associates (U.K.). (June)

Publishers Weekly

Cozy fans will be pleased.” —Publishers Weekly

“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 on the Sidney Chambers series

“Runcie strikes a low-key balance of theology, humor, drama and crime in this collection of ecclesiastical.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Runcie's gently persistent protagonist is almost sure to win fans, whether he's engaged in active sleuthing or musing on the nature of evil or love. Major life changes here lead to new beginnings for Chambers that should whet interest in future volumes of these charming cozies just touched with sex and violence.” —Booklist

“Deft, witty, yet unconstrained by the literary hipster's horror of being thought uncool, they are quite delicious.” —Christianity Today

From the Publisher

2014-02-06
Clergyman/detective Sidney Chambers returns in this collection of four new mysteries. In "The Problem of Evil," Canon Sidney Chambers and his German wife, Hildegard, return from a reconciliation service 17 years after the end of World War II to find two dead doves on their doorstep. After a fellow vicar is found suffocated in his own church, more dead birds presage the murders of more clergy members until Sidney helps his friend Inspector Geordie Keating find the killer. In "Female, Nude," Sidney is at an art exhibit when a nude woman reciting French poetry creates a Happening. Then a valuable painting disappears, sending Sidney through the world of avant-garde art and to the French coastal town of Dieppe to solve the theft. In "Death by Water," an old army friend asks Sidney to play a clergyman in a film version of The Nine Tailors. Sidney agrees without realizing what an ordeal he's facing—not just due to the fact that his former mate is such a demanding director, but since one of the actors who's supposed to drown in the film is all too good at his job. In the final episode, "Christmas, 1963," Sidney, still mourning the loss of a favorite companion, anticipates the birth of his and Hildegard's child. When someone else's baby is kidnapped from the hospital, Sidney brings his most compassionate touch to the case in hopes of restoring the child to his parents. In all four tales, the gently eccentric Sidney proves himself a dedicated clergyman who's so easily tempted to pursue a mystery that it's no wonder his wife, his clerical superior and his friend the local inspector keep telling him to mind his own business. Runcie (Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night, 2013, etc.), son of a former Archbishop of Canterbury, strikes a low-key balance of theology, humor, drama and crime in this collection of ecclesiastical cozies.

Kirkus Reviews