Sidney Chambers and The Dangers of Temptation
Grantchester Mysteries 5
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3.9 • 13 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The fifth installment in The Grantchester Mystery Series, and the inspiration for the primetime PBS/Masterpiece television series, Grantchester.
It's the summer of love in late 1960s. The Apollo 11 astronauts are preparing to land on the moon, the war in Biafra dominates the news and Basil D'Oliveira has just been dropped from the England cricket team before a test series in apartheid South Africa. In the midst of all this change, Sidney Chambers, the loveable English clergyman, continues his amateur sleuthing investigations.
A bewitching divorcée enlists Sidney's help in convincing her son to leave a hippie commune' at a soiree on Grantchester Meadows during May Week celebrations, a student is divested of a family heirloom; Amanda's marriage runs into trouble; Sidney and Hildegard holiday behind the Iron Curtain; Mrs. Maguire's husband returns from the dead; and an arson attack in Cambridge leads Sidney to uncover a cruel cast of blackmail involving his former curate.
In the rare gaps between church and crime, Sidney struggles with a persistent case of toothache, has his first flutter at the Newmarket races, and witnesses the creation of a classic rock song.
Charming, witty, intelligent, and filled with a strong sense of compassion, these six new stories are guaranteed to satisfy and delight this clerical detective's many fans.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Runcie continues to deepen his characterization of Sidney Chambers in the six short stories set in the 1960s and 1970s that comprise the engrossing fifth volume of the Grantchester Mysteries (after 2015's Sidney Chambers and the Forgiveness of Sin). The rounded depiction is most in evidence in the title story, as the clergyman, now elevated to the position of Archdeacon of Ely, is asked by a woman he finds disturbingly attractive to help get her teenage son away from a commune, a request that becomes much more delicate when a murder occurs. Runcie is also adept at crafting mysteries without a corpse, as in the theft of a valuable necklace that coincides with a cattle stampede. In one lapse into Jessica Fletcher syndrome, Sidney's visit to Germany, his wife's homeland, lands him in the midst of a homicide investigation. The series' strength lies less in the author's devising and resolving baffling whodunits than in his portrayal of his all-too-human lead.
