Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death

For no terribly good reason other than a desire to read some cosy crime and that I heard Alex Jennings reading the first part of the title story on R4ex earlier this week, I decided to read Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death, the first of James Runcie's Granchester anthologies following the exploits of Canon Sidney Chambers and his friend Inspector Geordie Keating. The stories unfold in chronological order starting in October 1953 with The Shadow of Death and ending a year later with Honourable Men.

In the title story of the collection, a local solicitor has died, apparently by his own hand. But after the funeral, Sidney is approached by the dead man's mistress, who also happens to be the wife of his business partner, claiming foul play. Somewhat reluctantly, Sidney begins investigating under the cover of carrying out his pastoral duties, only to uncover the solution to the mystery in Stephen Staunton's pocket diary — a diary which he wrote in pencil and erased at end of every day. Probably the strongest of the collection, this introduces the principal characters and establishes Sidney as a popular and successful vicar, albeit one beset by doubts about whether he is actually successfully fulfilling his calling or whether he is allowing himself to distracted by temporal matters that are none of his concern.

The second story, A Question of Trust, features a New Year's Eve dinner party that goes disastrously wrong when a ruby ring goes missing. The problems start when the host, Nigel Thompson MP, drops a bottle champagne immediately after Guy Hopkins, a rich oaf, has propose marriage to Amanda Kendall. In the following confusion, Amanda's new ring vanishes, leaving Nigel concerned that his fragile wife may be responsible. The mystery is largely secondary to the party, which serves to introduce Amanda Kendall, with whom Sidney has a complex relationship, Sidney's sister Jennifer, and her boyfriend Johnny Johnson, who just happens to be the son of a notorious but now reformed jewel thief.

First, Do No Harm is the slightest story in the collection, involving as it does the familiar trope of a doctor who may be bumping off his patients, but its resolution is interestingly ambiguous. A Matter of Time finds Sidney and Inspector Geordie Keating in a Soho jazz club owned by Phil "The Cat" Johnson, father of Jenny Chambers' boyfriend Johnny Johnson, for a concert by American jazz diva Gloria Dee. When Claudette Johnson, Johnny's sister, is killed during the drum solo — something for which Sidney has no time at all! — the pair find themselves caught up in the subsequent investigation.

The Lost Holbein takes shape when Amanda Kendall realises that a minor painting in Lord Teversham's collection is actually a copy of Holbein's famous missing portrait of Anne Boleyn. Of all the stories in the collection, this feels like the darkest. Partly this is down to the character of the criminal, who first appears to be a caricature of a creep before turning into something a good deal nastier, but largely I suspect its because we've had time to get to know Amanda over the previous couple of stories, making her situation feel far more immediate and perilous than the abrupt death of the previously unknown Claudie Johnson.

The final story, Honourable Men, involves a production of Julius Caesar during which the principal is actually stabbed on stage by one of the conspirators — something that holds strong echoes of Ngiao Marsh's Off With His Head, which also features a group murder that occurs in the middle of a performance. The story also serves to mark a number of changes to Sidney's world and its sensibilities. Technological changes are marked by the decision of one of the characters to switch his engineering firm away from radio and towards television, which he sees as being the next big thing. Social changes are marked by Sidney's non-judgemental attitude to his suspicion that Lord Teversham and his former business partner Simon Hackford were probably lovers and that Ben Blackford may have taken Hackford's place. Sidney also discusses the Church's attitude to homosexuality with his curate — who, it is suggested from his first appearance, may well be gay — only to discover that Leonard seems to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Archbishop of Canterbury's position on the subject — surely an in-joke given that James Runcie's father occupied that very office in 1980s.

In general Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death is an enjoyable collection, although the first story feels stronger than most of the others. Sidney Chambers is an engaging character, greatly given to worrying whether he's actually fulfilling his calling when he allows himself to be distracted by crime, and somewhat beset by his relationship with Amanda Kendall, whom he loves and who loves him, but whose demeanour and circumstances make her unsuited to life as a vicar's wife.