Short Story Wednesday: Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie

 

The Grantchester Mysteries is a series of short story collections by James Runcie. The short stories are all connected and follow the criminal investigations of Sidney Chambers, a vicar in Grantchester. The crimes are not all murders, but they are all treated seriously. There were only six short stories in this collection, and they are not very short. The shortest one was 50 pages, the longest was 80 pages, so some of them count as novellas?  Anyway, I liked all of the stories, not sure which is my favorite, and I now have a copy of the 2nd book in the series. I have not seen the TV series based on this series, but we will try it sometime.

The first story is set in 1953, the coronation year of Queen Elizabeth II. I read that story back in October 2025 and discussed it in this post.

I finished reading all of the stories in Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death in early December and I enjoyed them very much. I like that Sidney is a vicar in the Church of England; I enjoy mysteries with a clerical setting. I admit that the various titles used in the Church of England are confusing to me, but the more I read these stories the closer I come to a rough understanding of the different roles.

"A Question of Trust"

This is the second story in the book and it begins on December 31st, 1953. Sidney is taking the train to London to visit with some family and friends. He then takes a bus to St. John's Wood, where he will attend a New Year's Eve dinner party at the home of his friend Nigel, one of the most promising MPs in the country. His sister Jenny, her new boyfriend, and Jenny's friend and flatmate Amanda Kendall will also be at the dinner. Sidney has known Amanda for years, and has always been attracted to her, but once he decided to become a clergyman, he was no longer considered a viable marriage partner for her.

At the dinner party, Amanda's engagement ring is stolen. The ring was very valuable and her fiance is understandably upset. It is suggested that Sidney help look into how the ring could have disappeared.

Several of the characters in this story show up in later stories, and I like the continuity from story to story. Sidney questions whether he should be involving himself in investigating crimes, in view of his profession. He often questions his beliefs but he is dedicated to his work; I like his philosophizing (to himself, usually) on various issues.

Other stories in the book deal with (1) the investigation of forgeries and thefts of valuable art works;  (2) a man murdered on stage, in a play that Sidney has a small part in; (3) a death at a jazz club; and (4) a doctor who may be helping older persons in the village towards death after long illnesses.

Short Story Wednesday: Christmas Stalkings, ed. Charlotte MacLeod

 

Christmas Stalkings, published in 1991, was the second Christmas short story anthology edited by Charlotte MacLeod. All of the stories in the book appeared in print for the first time in this book. This week I finished reading all the stories in that book. 

In my original post on several short stories in Christmas Stalkings, I noted that the stories in the book had been described as mostly dark. These two stories are on the lighter, cozier side and I enjoyed them very much.

"The Fabulous Nick" by Mickey Friedman

In this story, the real Santa Claus gets a letter from a child saying: "I hate you! Stay away from us!" It is signed by Jason T. McGuire. The address is in Greenwich Village in New York City. Nick, as Santa is called in this story, decides to go undercover in Jason's neighborhood and see why Jason hates him so much. It turns out that Jason's father was arrested for stealing valuable jewels in another apartment in the same building that they live in and is in jail. The family has no way to get him out on bail, so he will still be in jail over Christmas, although his family is sure he is innocent. Nick decides to investigate further. He introduces himself to Jason's mother as Nick Santos, a chimney specialist who has come to work on the chimneys in the apartment building. He then talks to several people who live in the building as he works on their chimneys. Santa Claus is a pretty good investigator in this story.

Mickey Friedman is a new author to me. Her mystery novels were published in the 1980s. There are reviews on Publisher's Weekly, and there was a review of Hurricane Season in 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller. (See this post at MysteryFile.) When I looked the author up on Fantastic Fiction, the mysteries attributed to Mickey Friedman showed up under another name, Michael Jan Friedman, along with a lot of science fiction novels. On Goodreads, the mystery novels show up under two names: Mickey Friedman and Michaela Thompson (which I believe is correct). If anyone else reading this has more information, I would love to hear about this author.

"Fruitcake, Mercy, and Black-eyed Peas" by Margaret Maron

I saved this story for last because it was one of my favorite stories in the book, AND because it can be considered a New Year's Day story, and I don't run into those very often. 

In this story, Marnolla Faison, a middle-aged black woman who lives in Dobbs, North Carolina, has been arrested for shoplifting, and not for the first time. She called Deborah Knott, a lawyer she has known for many years, to bail her out. She was arrested for stealing diapers and there are mitigating factors. Billy Tyson, owner of the Bigg Shopp where Marnolla had perpetrated her crime, is not in any mood to be talked out of pressing charges, as he had in the past. 

This story was the least-crime related in this book, if I remember correctly. Yes, there is a crime, but it is not serious. The story is more about the people involved in and connected to the shoplifting incident, and community relations.

In addition to the fact that this story addresses some social issues in a sensitive and humorous way, I love this story because it ends with a New Year's Day dinner featuring black-eyed peas. It is a tradition in the South to eat black-eyed peas on the first day of the year for luck during the coming year. My husband cooks Hoppin' John, a dish containing black-eyed peas, every year on New Year's Day.

Margaret Maron wrote two mystery series. My favorite books by her are from the Sigrid Harald series, about a female New York City police detective who has to deal with the obstacles of being a woman in a male profession in the 1980s. The first book, One Coffee With, was published in 1981. 

Maron's series starring Judge Deborah Knott was her most well-known series, and is set in North Carolina.  The story in this book features Deborah Knott before she became a judge, and was written before the first book in that series was published in 1992. 

Books Read in September and October 2025

 

I am so far behind on summarizing my monthly reading that I decided to combine my September and October books in one post. I read 5 books in September and 7 books in October and I enjoyed all of them.

Nonfiction

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning (2017) by Margareta Magnusson

The subtitle of this book is: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter. I read it about six years ago, and enjoyed it. On a second reading it did not inspire me so much, even though I have plenty of things to get rid of. This brief book (only about 100 pages) is full of humor and useful hints and reminders of how much you need to let go of as you get older, and written from the author's personal experience. 

Fiction

State of Wonder (2011) by Ann Patchett

This book is set mostly in Brazil. The story is about Dr. Annick Swenson, an older woman who has been researching a proposed fertility drug for a pharmaceutical firm based in Minnesota. She is living in the Amazon jungle working in a lab but she has not reported back on her progress for a long time. The other major character is Dr. Marina Singh, a pharmacologist working for the same firm; she is sent to Brazil by her employer, to find out the status of Dr. Swenson's research. There are many other characters, and they are all interesting. It is a very bizarre story, although it gets very much better at the halfway point. In the end, I liked the story very much. 

Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf

Reading Mrs. Dalloway was a good experience for me. It was the first book I had read by Virginia Woolf, plus I had never read anything written in stream of consciousness style. It did take me a good while to adjust to that style of telling a story, and it got even more confusing when the story moves from Mrs. Dalloway's thoughts to various other people's ruminations.

The story is basically a day in the life of Mrs. Dalloway, but as Clarissa Dalloway goes through her day she muses about her past and her future: her daughter; her daughter's friend, who she doesn't like; and her own relationships with men over the years. My review is here.

Get in Trouble (2015) by Kelly Link

This short story collection was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. There are nine short stories; there are some that are science fiction, some are fantasy, and even one story that is straight fiction. I liked the stories and plan to read more by this author. My review is here.

Oh William! (2021) by Elizabeth Strout

I have loved all of Strout's books that feature Lucy Barton. In My Name is Lucy Barton, Lucy tells of one event in her life while she is married to William, and I really disliked him in that story. In each succeeding novel about their relationship I grew to understand him and Lucy more. The books are all about relationships; in this book, William is married to his third wife and Lucy's second husband died recently. See my thoughts here.

Alternate History / Espionage / Fantasy

At the Table of Wolves (2017) by Kay Kenyon

This is a spy story set in an alternative version of the UK and Germany in the years leading up to World War II. In both countries, there are people with fantastical paranormal abilities; these powers started showing up after World War I. For the most part, the "superpowers" are not very obvious and people have to be trained to use them. See my review here.

Fantasy

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea (2022) by Rebecca Thorne

My son purchased this book at the book sale this year.  I was interested in checking out what a cozy fantasy was like so my son let me read it first. The story is about a lesbian couple who want to leave their current lives behind and open a bookstore in a remote location where no one can find them. The problem is that Reyna is a private guard to a powerful and cruel queen, and Kianthe is a powerful mage. Somehow they both manage to leave their responsibilities behind and move to a small town far from their previous lives to set up a book shop. My review is here.

Guards! Guards! (1989) by Terry Pratchett

This book is the 8th book in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series and the 1st book in the City Watch sub-series. The series stars Sam Vimes, but in this novel, the City Watch police force don't function very well in keeping the peace, because of the corruption at high levels in the city of Ankh-Morpork. This is only the third Discworld book I have read by Pratchett; I read Mort in 2016. So I had to get used to Pratchett's style of writing again. I enjoyed the book, even though it took me about half of the book to get into it and be able to keep track of the characters. The characters are all very strange and the book is satirical. I now have the next book in the City Watch series to read (Men at Arms).

Crime Fiction

The '44 Vintage (1978) by Anthony Price

This is the eighth book in Price's David Audley series of nineteen books, all published between 1970 and 1990. The series is in the spy fiction genre, and the stories are Cold War espionage. Except for this one, which takes place near the end of World War II, and is kind of an origin story for the two main characters in the series, historian and intelligence agent David Audley and Colonel Jack Butler.  I loved this book and all the other books I have read in the series; each book focuses on different historical event. The '44 Vintage would not be a good place to start the series, though.

The Satan Sampler (1979) by Victor Canning

This is the 6th book in a spy fiction series called the Birdcage books. They all revolve around a covert security group in the UK, a branch of the Ministry of Defense. I enjoyed this book, although it wasn't as good as earlier entries in this series. See my thoughts here.

The Dentist (2020) by Tim Sullivan

This is the first book in a series that features an autistic police detective. I was very pleased with the book. The plot was very good,  complicated but realistic. I liked the protagonist, Detective Sergeant George Cross, who has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. I liked everything about the book, including seeing what a person with Asperger's would encounter in a job, and how the person's coworkers may be affected. 

This series started in 2020 and there are already eight books in the series. I have already purchased the second and third books in the series and will be reading them in 2026.

Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect (2023) by Benjamin Stevenson

This is the 2nd book in the Ernest Cunningham series; I read the 1st book earlier this year. Both of the books are highly entertaining and humorous. Ernest, who narrates the story, makes a living writing about how to write mysteries. Prior to this book he has written a memoir about his experience with a serial killer. As the book begins, he is attending a writing conference set on a train.

More cat pictures...

London has now been with us five months. We are still adjusting to London and he to us. When we first got him he sat or slept on cat beds. Now he ignores them and uses the furniture (or sits on books). Click on the images for the best viewing quality. 

Oh William!: Elizabeth Strout

I read this book in early October. I read Lucy by the Sea and Tell Me Everything, later books by Elizabeth Strout, in November. 

I have loved all the books that feature Lucy Barton. But I find it very hard to review them. For one thing, each story moves Lucy to a new place in her life, and that was why I read the books in order and did not read any reviews of the books until I had read the book. In My Name is Lucy Barton, Lucy tells of one event in her life while she is married to William, and I really disliked him in that story. In each succeeding novel about their relationship I grew to understand him and Lucy more. The books are all about relationships, and in this book and the next two books are also about relationships and aging.  

At the beginning of Oh William!, Lucy's second husband, David, had died about a year earlier. They had been married five years, and she misses him very much. Lucy talks about her marriage to David a bit, but most of the story focuses on her previous marriage to William, which lasted about twenty years, and their relationship since then. William was an only child, and very close to his mother. So Lucy and William and their two daughters spent a lot of time with her. After having a paternity test, William learns things about his mother that he did not know. 

The writing style that Elizabeth Strout uses in the books focused on Lucy Barton drew me into the story. It feels like Lucy is talking to the reader. Some of her other books are more a sequence of related stories, and the style in those seems different to me, although they are just as compelling to read.

If you liked My Name is Lucy Barton, you would probably like this too. Anything is Possible also has stories related to Lucy Barton.

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Publisher:  Random House, 2022 (orig. publ. 2021)
Length:     240 pages
Format:    Trade Paperback
Series:     Amgash series
Setting:    USA
Genre:     Fiction
Source:    I purchased my copy in 2024.

Short Story Wednesday: More Stories from Christmas Stalkings

 

Christmas Stalkings, published in 1991, was the second Christmas short story anthology edited by Charlotte MacLeod. As the subtitle "Tales of Yuletide Murder" suggests, these are all mystery stories. All of the stories in the book appeared in print for the first time in this book. Last Wednesday, I reviewed three of the stories. I have several more stories to talk about today. Here they are:

"Counterfeit Christmas" by Charlotte MacLeod

MacLeod is a Canadian crime fiction writer who has written two series under her own name, and two under a pseudonym, as Alisa Craig. One of her series features Peter Shandy, a professor at Balaclava Agricultural College in rural Massachusetts. 

This story also features Peter Shandy, who lives in a faculty dwelling alongside the homes of seven other members of the faculty. Each year at Christmas all of the homes are decorated, and tourists come on campus to enjoy the decorated homes. Food is sold by the students to make money. This year, the campus comptroller, Moira Haskins, finds a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill in the funds from the previous days' sales. The bill has the portrait of President Thorkjeld Svenson on the bill rather than that of President Andrew Jackson. As more counterfeit bills show up the next night, Shandy helps to figure out what is going on and how to deal with it. It is a tame story, but the solution is clever and fun. This story features Peter Shandy's cat, Jane.

"The Running of the Deer" by Reginald Hill

Reginald Hill's most well-known mystery series is his Dalziel and Pascoe series. I have read 14 of the 24 books in that series. The character in this story is Joe Sixmith. At the time this story was published, there were two short stories about Sixsmith. Two years later, in 1993, Hill published the first novel in the Joe Sixsmith series, Blood Sympathy. I haven't read any novels in that series but I have copies of all five of them.

In "The Running of the Deer," Joe Sixsmith is hired to look into "lamping" incidents on an estate in Cumbria. Lamping is using extremely bright lights in hunting, in this case for deer. Joe is invited to stay in a converted barn while he is investigating. I liked this story because events take a surprising sharp turn at the end. And because Sixsmith has a black and white cat that travels with him. And now I am going to get moving on reading the first Joe Sixsmith novel.  

"A Political Necessity" by Robert Barnard

Robert Barnard is one of my favorite authors. I have read all of his Perry Trethowan series, most of the Charlie Peace series (which broke off from the Perry Trethowan series), and a lot of his standalone novels. His books are quirky, often have interesting twists, and are generally considered in the cozy sub-genre. They have bite but they are not violent or gritty.

"A Political Necessity" is a story about a politician who has recently gotten a promotion to a position in the Home Office. Immediately he starts planning to kill his wife.

First few sentences in the story:

It must be rare for the first thought of a newly appointed government minister to be: Now is the time to kill my wife. Don’t get me wrong—I’m sure many of my colleagues would like to, with that dull, insistent sort of wishing which will never actually impel them to action, and which is characteristic of second-rate minds. My thought was not If only I could but Now I can.

This is a pretty dark story, but I loved it.

"The Only True Unraveller" by John Malcolm

"Death is the only true unraveller" is a quote from The Gondoliers by Gilbert and Sullivan. This story starts with two men, long time friends, going for a walk on a cold night in December, on Christmas Eve. They are walking through a cemetery near to Quentin Cranbrooks' home. The protagonist is visiting Quentin at Christmas because he has been widowed for two years and has no one to spend Christmas with. The story is atmospheric, the mood gradually gets darker, and the setting is wonderful. If you like Gilbert and Sullivan and/or cemeteries, you might enjoy this story.

"The January Sale Stowaway" by Dorothy Cannell

This story is very cozy. It doesn't truly take place at Christmas but is about the days following Christmas and into January at a time when the main character was alone and lonely. And it also involves a department store Father Christmas who is bitter because he has been accused of theft. I loved the story and was very glad I read it.

The first Christmas anthology edited by MacLeod was Mistletoe Mysteries, published in 1989.

The Satan Sampler: Victor Canning

This is the 6th book in a loose series called the Birdcage books. They were published between 1971 and 1985. They all revolve around a covert security group in the UK, a branch of the Ministry of Defense. The officials and the agents attached to the Birdcage group are generally amoral, although they believe that their mission is important to the welfare of the country.

Since this is a very difficult book to summarize, I am using the description on the dust jacket: 

On the death of his elder brother, Richard Seyton inherits the Seyton estate, which had been in the family since the fourteenth century. But the great Seyton Hall–showpiece of the estate–has been leased to an international charitable organization, the Felbeck Foundation for the Preservation of the Christian Heritage, which is not all that it seems to be. Determined to find a way to break the lease, Seyton is slowly enmeshed in a dangerous web of intrigue and underground politics, especially when the sinister intelligence organization know as Birdcage intrudes upon his affairs.

 

This story isn't quite as good as the earlier books. Some of the characterizations have less depth, and the spy story is very similar to the previous book. The evil practices and deceptions of the group are just as nefarious as ever, though. The story does feature several of the Birdcage characters from the previous two books, and I liked that. And the emphasis on the beauty of the countryside, the descriptions of the birds and animals, is still there. I loved the setting, the atmosphere, the use of nature. 

The Birdcage novels are usually somewhat of a downer in the end, which is realistic for spy fiction, but this one had a more upbeat ending than usual.

This quote is from the back flyleaf of the dust jacket of the first US hardback edition:

"For years now, Victor Canning has been moving into new directions with the suspense story. The spy thriller has become a novel of character with him. The doomsday book of fate intertwined with old family histories has moved into fresh insights of human foibles. The chase genre has been brought to three-dimensional life by the astute use of settings, where every bird and leaf become a part of the narrative." (Ed Hutshing, Book Editor, San Diego Union)

There are only two more books in the series, and I am looking forward to both of them.

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Publisher:   William Morrow and Co., 1980 (orig. pub. 1979)
Length:       233 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Birdcage books #6
Setting:      UK
Genre:       Espionage fiction
Source:      Purchased in December, 2024.