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A review by foreverday
Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death: The Grantchester Mysteries by James Runcie
3.0
Actual rating: 3.5
This was an enjoyable enough collection of short mystery stories. I enjoyed how each chapter was a different case and you could therefore dip into it, read one chapter, reach that chapter's conclusion and then be able to stop and go to bed/be productive (and yet there were some common threads that meant the collection didn't feel completely disconnected). I also enjoyed the setting, although that was mostly when I was able to go "I've been there/know exactly what he's talking about with the reference to that". The characters were also enjoyable- I haven't read that many books in which the main character is a Vicar and Sidney was v nice.
However, I would also say that being a Vicar didn't seem terribly conducive to being a detective. When the characters asked "Erm, excuse me random man in a dog collar, what are you doing asking me about murder??" I was inclined to agree with them. He didn't seem to have any skills that led him to becoming a particularly skilled detective, and he seemed to just stumble into both problem and solution. It felt a little bit as if it had seemed like a very novel concept --"A detective... yet also Vicar!!"-- and it had just been run with, and it not entirely practically worked out.
I'd like to see what happens to the characters, and it was an enjoyable enough as a read, yet not the best detective novel I've read.
This was an enjoyable enough collection of short mystery stories. I enjoyed how each chapter was a different case and you could therefore dip into it, read one chapter, reach that chapter's conclusion and then be able to stop and go to bed/be productive (and yet there were some common threads that meant the collection didn't feel completely disconnected). I also enjoyed the setting, although that was mostly when I was able to go "I've been there/know exactly what he's talking about with the reference to that". The characters were also enjoyable- I haven't read that many books in which the main character is a Vicar and Sidney was v nice.
However, I would also say that being a Vicar didn't seem terribly conducive to being a detective. When the characters asked "Erm, excuse me random man in a dog collar, what are you doing asking me about murder??" I was inclined to agree with them. He didn't seem to have any skills that led him to becoming a particularly skilled detective, and he seemed to just stumble into both problem and solution. It felt a little bit as if it had seemed like a very novel concept --"A detective... yet also Vicar!!"-- and it had just been run with, and it not entirely practically worked out.
I'd like to see what happens to the characters, and it was an enjoyable enough as a read, yet not the best detective novel I've read.