Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil

April 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.).

February 15, 2014
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.

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May 1, 2014

Runcie's episodic (this one is in four parts) mysteries aptly capture British academia of the early 1960s. His clerical sleuth confronts deadly sin head-on in the third entry (after Sidney Chambers and the Perils of Night) in this highly regarded series.

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May 1, 2014
Anglican Canon Sidney Chambers, like his friend and colleague, Inspector Geordie Keating, is never off duty. Yet Chambers must balance his clerical obligations, his recent marriage, and the detective work he relishes, plus a role in a film based on a Dorothy Sayers novel, while bearing in mind his archdeacon's directive to avoid distractions from his religious life. Warning aside, Chambers is instrumental in solving four crimes in 196263 in and around Grantchester: three murders by a killer targeting clergymen, the theft of a museum painting, the seemingly accidental death of a movie actor, and the abduction of a baby from a hospital. While so many crimes in a single volume may distract new readers of the Grantchester mysteries, of which this is the third of a projected six, 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)