I discovered this book series thanks to the TV series
GRANTCHESTER
and this is the third book I have read, and
since this is book sixth have I missed three, but that is
something I'm planning to rectify.
In the first book we meet a young Sidney Chambers
some years after WW2, unmarried and vicar of
Grantchester. It's now the 70s and Sidney and Hildegard
are married and they have a young daughter, Anna. He
has risen in the ranks and is now archdeacon. But, he
still can't stay away from trouble as the stories in this
book will prove. This book is, as the rest I have read,
divided into short stories that have different cases that
Sidney takes one. And, I have to say that so far this is
my favorite book in the series, all six stories are quite
good with interesting cases, from murder and rape
cases to Sidney's nephew going missing. And the years go
by in the book. In the first story, is it early 70s and
Anna is a little girl, but she is a teenager in the last
story in this book.
SIDNEY CHAMBERS AND THE PERSISTENCE OF LOVE is a fabulous
book. It has an interesting mix of both serious and less
serious cases. I found, for instance, the rape case both
infuriating and sad. Its words against words and the
attitudes towards the woman in the trial are brutal. In
many ways it felt like nothing has changed when it
comes to rape cases: this is the 70s and she should not have
been
drinking and was provocatively dressed. The lawyer pretty
much assumed she asked for it.
One thing I like about this book is how one get to follow
the changes of time. The previous book was set in the 60s
and now we have reached the 1970s where so much has changed
in the world. Sidney is growing older, music
like jazz is not as popular anymore and anarchism is
popular among the young. It's a world that's changing and we
feel it through Sidney experiences. The last story in this
book is the most
poignant, there is no crime in the story, but a deeply
sad story that hits Sidney hard.
SIDNEY CHAMBERS AND THE PERSISTENCE OF LOVE can be read
as a stand alone. But, at the same time, do I think I would
recommend reading back since the books feel
like a journey that started when we first meet Sidney
Chambers back in the 50s. Still, one perhaps feels as I
did when I finished this one and that was that I really
needed to read the ones I have missed.
The eagerly anticipated sixth installment in the
Grantchester Mysteries series, now a major PBS television
series as well.
The sixth book in the James Runcie's much-loved Granchester
Mystery series, which has been adapted for Masterpiece's
Grantchester starring James Norton, sees full-time priest,
part-time detective Sidney Chambers plunged back into
sleuthing when he discovers a body in a bluebell wood.
It is May 1971 and the Cambridgeshire countryside is
bursting into summer. Attending to his paternal duties,
Archdeacon Sidney Chambers is walking in the woods with his
daughter Anna and their aging Labrador, Byron, when they
stumble upon a body. Beside the dead man lies a basket of
wild flowers, all poisonous. And so it is that Sidney is
thrust into another murder investigation, entering a world
of hippies, folk singers, and psychedelic plants, where love
triangles and permissive behavior seem to hide something darker.
Despite the tranquil appearance of the Diocese of Ely, there
is much to keep Sidney and his old friend, Detective
Inspector Geordie Keating, as busy as ever. An historic
religious text vanishes from a Cambridge college; Sidney's
former flame, Amanda Richmond, gets a whiff of art-world
corruption; and his nephew disappears in the long, hot
summer of 1976.
Meanwhile, Sidney comes face to face with the divine
mysteries of life and love while wrestling with earthly
problems--from parish scandals and an alarmingly progressive
new secretary to his own domestic misdemeanors, the
challenges of parenthood and a great loss.
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