Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night (Grantchester, 2)

This is a collection of six short stories, each of which stands on its own, though there are some connections between them, and some characters are present in each story. The protagonist is, of course, Sidney Chambers, a Church of England canon in Grantchester, a bucolic village close to Cambridge University. Sidney's sideline is criminal investigation, via his friendship with Cambridgeshire policeman Geordie Keating.

Sidney is a mild-mannered man, but there is some spice to his life. He has two women in his life: Amanda, his longtime close friend, and Hildegarde, the German widow who he met in the first volume in this series, when her husband was murdered. In this volume, the stories range from the murder of a Muslim grocer to a close shave for Sidney when he visits Hildegarde in Germany just as the Iron Curtain is ringing down.

Author James Runcie is the son of Robert Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1980s, so he comes by his interest in churchmen honestly. In the website about the Sidney Chambers series, he writes that he plans to have six novels in the series, beginning in 1953 and ending in 1978, writing about a period in which there were vast changes in English society.

Runcie's strong suit is his ability to evoke the feel of the village and the university in the 1950s, so soon after the war's end. The book should be a rewarding experience for those who reading for atmosphere and storytelling. The avid mystery reader may be less pleased, because the crimes tend to be solved in a burst of exposition. There isn't the seeding of clues that allows the careful reader to figure out the whodunnit.

Note about the audiobook: Avoid the audiobook! The reader, Peter Wickham, is terrible at women's voices. In particular, he makes Amanda sound like a little old woman, when she's supposed to be a wealthy young society woman.

UPDATE: In the winter of early 2015, PBS began showing the Mystery! miniseries Grantchester, which dramatizes stories in the Sidney Chambers series. Grantchester is far, far better than this book, both because the characters are livelier and the adaptations manage to turn the mysteries into real whodunnits.

If you have watched "Grantchester" on PBS, don't expect the books to share much besides titles and character names. The writing and story organization is a little strange, and the narrative results are different. The novels still have some very good points; the screenwriters for the series have taken excellent characters and settings and produced great material. The compliments here sound backhanded, but the point is that the novels are incredibly different from the series. This comparison is the reason--maybe--that the writing sometimes seemed odd. I think I liked "Perils of the Night" better than "Shadow of Death." The characters of Amanda and Hildegard are also interestingly compared--Amanda is a little tough to like.

May contain spoilers! Didn't feel like the same characters as in the first book, which I liked very much. The fun, brightness and spiritual lift and depth seem to have been replaced by long-winded passages on Cricket (now, it may partly be that I have never seen a Cricket game and don't know a thing about it), detailed chemistry and science lectures, and a German prison encounter that solidified my dislike for Sidney's choice in a wife. Sidney now seems quite boring, I'm sorry to say, and dear Amanda older but not wiser. My personal gripe (not just in this book) is when foreign dialog or references are used without any translation in a supposedly light book of fiction. I have just started the third book in the series and am hoping the author has gotten back his stride. I do think these characters are a fine basis and love the TV series too.

I won this book off the the goodreads give-away! I did not realize it was book 2 in a series till it came in. I have to read books in order so I checked out the first one from the library to read. This book is set around the era of the 50/60's in England. It has a lot of history in it which is always interesting but I did find it slow at times. The main character Sidney is a Anglican priest who dabbles on the side as a detective. Like the first book there are multiple short stories in the book where a new crime takes place and Sidney comes to the rescue to solve it. As the book progresses Sidney finally starts having a love life and finally take leaps of faith in that direction to match his strong Christian faith. All in all this book was ok but I have to say I actually enjoyed the first book more! If you like the early british era mixed in with multiple short mysteries then I suggest you check out the first book at your library. If you enjoy it you can always then buy it and the 2nd book as well. I will pass this book on to someone else as it is not something I would re-read again.

This is the second book in the Sidney Chambers series, and it takes him from the mid to late 1950s into the time of the building of the Berlin Wall. As usual, the writing is first rate and the stories engage the interest of the reader.

One of the stories concerns a game of cricket, and the author spends quite a bit of time retelling what happened in the game. As a non-cricket following person, I was completely lost as to what was going on, but I did love the repeating of the word "googly", even though I had no idea what it referred to in the game.

Our intrepid priest and part-time detective gets involved in more strange goings on, and the last story in the collection, in which Sidney is in Germany at the time of the building of the Wall, is quite interesting. I hate to see the years pass so quickly, but definitely look forward to reading the next bok in the series.

Excellent read

Great series.

Very good book and stories. Love booth book and TV series w/adorable James Norton. Recommend both highly! Great fun!

enjoyed it

Great books by James Runcie