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The Grantchester Mysteries
by James Runcie
Charming, witty, intelligent, and filled with a strong sense of compassion, here are six new stories guaranteed to satisfy and delight this clerical detective's many fans.
It's the summer of love in late 1960s England. Basil D'Oliveira has just been dropped from the English cricket team before for a test series in apartheid South Africa; the war in Biafra dominates the news; and the Apollo 11 astronauts are preparing to land on the moon. In the midst of all this change, Sidney Chambers, now Archdeacon of Ely Cathedral, is still up to his amateur sleuthing investigations.
A bewitching divorcee 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 case 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.
"The series' strength lies less in the author's devising and resolving baffling whodunits than in his portrayal of his all-too-human lead." - Publishers Weekly
"Runcie's gently paced stories, now set in the nostalgic 1960s, will appeal to cozy fans who want less blood and more village shenanigans." - Library Journal
"The Swinging '60s give Runcie's sleuth in a cassock plenty of opportunity to stick his memorable nose in where it isn't wanted." - Kirkus
"Perfect reading for a sunny English garden." - The Times (UK)
"Runcie has honed his style of light, escapist, small-town crime stories to something approaching perfection." - Glasgow Herald (UK)
"Runcie works his magic using simple sentences, archetypal characters and a sense of suspense that creates an atmosphere of delicious anticipation." - Independent (UK)
"There is no reason at all why this series should not run and run and why Sidney Chambers should not occupy the same place in the pantheon as Miss Marple or Poirot." - The Catholic Herald
This information about Sidney Chambers and The Dangers of Temptation was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
James Runcie is an award-winning film-maker, playwright and literary curator. He is the author of twelve novels that have been translated into twelve languages, including the seven books in the Grantchester Mysteries series. He has been Artistic Director of the Bath Literature Festival, Head of Literature and Spoken Word at the Southbank Centre, London, and Commissioning Editor for Arts on BBC Radio 4. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in Scotland.
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