Short Story Wednesday: The Grantchester Mysteries

 

The Grantchester Mysteries consists of six short story collections by James Runcie. The short stories are all connected and follow the investigations of Sidney Chambers, a vicar in Grantchester. This first story is set in 1953, the coronation year of Queen Elizabeth II. 

Years ago, I read several reviews of the stories in the Grantchester TV series and some reviewers said that the TV episodes were better than the short stories. So for a while I avoided reading the stories. I still haven't seen the TV series, but now I have read the first story in Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death and I enjoyed it very much. 

"The Shadow of Death"

First paragraph:

Canon Sidney Chambers had never intended to become a detective. Indeed, it came about quite by chance, after a funeral, when a handsome woman of indeterminate age voiced her suspicion that the recent death of a Cambridge solicitor was not suicide, as had been widely reported, but murder.

The death is a suicide and the lover of the dead man, Pamela Morton, is the woman who asks Sidney to look into it. She doesn't believe that he would commit suicide. Sidney is a vicar, and although he doesn't see himself as suited to investigating such an issue, he agrees to talk to various people who knew the dead man. 

It helps that he has a good friend, Inspector Keating, who worked on the investigation of the man's death. However, his friend is somewhat irritated by Sidney's interest, and doesn't see that there is evidence that points to murder.

Other characters are:

• the wife of the dead man;
• the dead man's secretary;
• and his business partner, who is married to the dead man's lover.

I liked this first story very much. I enjoyed meeting the protagonist, Canon Sidney Sheldon. I liked Sidney's musings on his faith, and his misgivings on getting himself involved in investigating a possible crime. I thought the mystery was put together well, and I liked the depictions of the various characters. 

This first story is 80 pages long, so it is basically a novella. The other five stories in the book range from 50 to 70 pages in length.