Sidney Chambers and The Forgiveness of Sins
Grantchester Mysteries 4
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3.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The fourth in The Grantchester Mystery Series, and the inspiration for the primetime PBS/Masterpiece television series, Grantchester.
The loveable full-time priest and part-time detective, Canon Sidney Chambers, continues his sleuthing adventures in 1960's Cambridge.
On a snowy Thursday morning in Lent 1964, a stranger seeks sanctuary in Grantchester's church, convinced he has murdered his wife. Sidney and his wife Hildegard go for a shooting weekend in the country and find their hostess has a sinister burn on her neck. Sidney's friend Amanda receives poison pen letters when at last she appears to be approaching matrimony. A firm of removal men 'accidentally' drop a Steinway piano on a musician's head outside a Cambridge college. During a cricket match, a group of schoolboys blow up their school Science Block. On a family holiday in Florence, Sidney is accused of the theft of a priceless painting.
Meanwhile, on the home front, Sidney's new curate Malcolm seems set to become rather irritatingly popular with the parish; his baby girl Anna learns to walk and talk; Hildegard longs to get an au pair and Sidney is offered a promotion.
Entertaining, suspenseful, thoughtful, moving and deeply humane, these six new stories are bound to delight the clerical detective's many fans.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in the 1960s, British author Runcie's outstanding fourth collection of clerical mysteries (after 2014's Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil) smoothly mixes clever puzzles with meditations on spiritual issues. The title story presents a truly baffling problem: Josef Madara, the principal violinist in a quartet, comes to Canon Sidney Chambers's Cambridge church seeking sanctuary; Madara claims that he woke up that morning in his hotel room to find his wife covered in blood. When Sidney's friend on the force, Geordie Keating, accompanies Sidney to the hotel, the room is empty and spotless. In later entries, Sidney attempts to help a woman escape an abusive husband and to show that a death caused by a falling piano was no accident. Sidney and the entire supporting cast, including a new curate with a fondness for cake, are all vividly portrayed, and comparisons to G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown books are amply justified.
