Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil (The Grantchester Mysteries)
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 1962–63 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. --Michele Leber