“Sidney Chambers and the Forgiveness of Sins”

I just finished watching the second season of the Grantchester Mysteries on PBS, based on the books by James Runcie. I’ve enjoyed the series, but the television program has diverged markedly from the books.

I like the books better, for two reasons. The television program adds plot lines that don’t exist in the books (Amanda Kendall, Sidney Chambers’ original love interest, doesn’t get married until the fourth book in Runcie’s series, for example. There are other significant differences, too.) And second, the books allow for Sidney’s ruminations on spiritual concerns, which the television program includes in truncated form at best.

In the fourth collection, Sidney Chambers and the Forgiveness of Sins, Sidney finds himself promoted. Instead of being the vicar at Grantchester, a close suburb of Cambridge, Sidney becomes the archdeacon at Ely Cathedral, 20 miles from Cambridge but still close enough to get involved in several of his friend Inspector Geordie Keating’s cases. The time period is roughly 1964.

In the title story, “The Forgiveness of Sins,” a musician claims sanctuary in Sidney’s church in Grantchester, saying he has found his wife stabbed to death in their hotel bed. When the police investigate, they find no body and no signs of foul play. In “Nothing to Worry About,” Sidney and his wife are invited to a weekend party at a country manor, and the owner and his guests are about as intriguing a crew as you’re likely to find in any Agatha Christie mystery.

In “Fugue,” Sidney is watching a Steinway grand piano being lifted up to a second-story window when there’s a slip and the piano crashes to the ground, killing the man who had bought it. An accident – or not? In “A Following,” Sidney’s dean at Ely Cathedral asks him to keep an eye their canon, who seems to have too much of a roving eye when it comes to females.

James Runcie

“Prize Day” finds Sidney investigating a rigged explosion in a chemistry lab at a local school, and uncovering far more than a schoolboy’s prank. And in “Florence,” Sidney finds himself taken into police custody in the Italian city for suspected theft of a valuable painting.

And all through these stories, Sidney, and author Runcie, meditates on forgiveness – what it means, how difficult it can be, and what can happen when it’s not forthcoming.

Sidney Chambers and the Forgiveness of Sins is the last of the currently published Grantchester mysteries, and it is just as good as its predecessors. And a new one is coning in June: Sidney Chambers and the Dangers of Temptation.

Related:

My review of Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death.

My review of Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night.

My review of Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil.

Photograph: Ely Cathedral.

James Runcie’s “Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil”

“Evil could seed itself in the quietest places and grow unchecked for years, spreading its malevolent influence until it was too late to stop.”

No, that’s not a commentary on the current U.S. presidential cycle. That’s the fictional Sidney Chambers, Anglican vicar of a church in Grantchester near Cambridge in the United Kingdom, musing to himself in James Runcie’s Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil.

Runcie, an author and film producer, has written a continuing series of stories about Sidney Chambers which form the basis for the popular ITV (in the U.S.) and PBS (in the U.S.) series The Grantchester Mysteries (season 2 begins on PBS on March 27). Each of the four volumes are collections of stories, done in independent-yet-related-story style of John Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey. Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil is the third in the series, and rather than the expected six stories in the volume of its two predecessors, it’s comprised of four longer stories.

The stories cover the period 1962 to 1963, and Runcie includes enough factual events of the period to provide a context of authenticity – the rededication of Coventry Cathedral,  the death of C.S. Lewis, geopolitical developments, and others.

In the title story, “The Problem of Evil.” Sidney helps local Inspector Geordie Keating investigate what becomes a series of murders – of local vicars. The case starts with two dead doves left of Chambers’ doorstep, and escalates to something far worse.

In “Female, Nude,” Sidney is attending an art exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge when a young woman removes her long fur coat and makes rather a spectacle of her nude self as she sings a French song. Minutes later, a painting is discovered to have been cut from its frame, stolen.

James Runcie

In “Death by Water,” Sidney finds himself playing a minor role in a movie production of The Nine Tailors by mystery writer Dorothy Sayers, courtesy of a friend who is the director and wants to film in an “authentic local area” like Grantchester. Sidney plays (surprise) a vicar, and is learning the ups and downs (and moral highs and lows) of the movie businesses when one of the actors dies in what looks like, but isn’t, an accident.

The final story, “Christmas, 1963,” a baby is stolen from the maternity ward of the local Cambridge hospital, and Sidney has a case of double anxiety over it, for his wife Hildegard is imminently expecting their first child.

Through these collections of stories, Runcie is advancing Sidney both chronologically (the series starts in the 1950s) as well as spiritually. Sidney is familiar to us as a man of faith who wrestles with doubt and issues just as much as the rest of us do. He could easily have become either a failed priest or a hard-shell one, but Runcie makes him real, his humanity and flaws recognizable because we share them.

Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil is not only a collection of good mystery stories, but also a discussion of the frailties and strengths of faith.

Related:

My review of Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death.

My review of Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night.

Photograph by Cambridge by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

“Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death”

It is England the early 1950s. The ravages, personal and national, of World War II are still visible and felt. A young bachelor canon is assigned to the small parish of Grantchester , near Cambridge. He still experiences flashbacks to the war, where he served with distinction. He finds a bit too much solace in the bottle. His sermons tend to be largely about love, trust and forgiveness, but he seems to have trouble trusting and forgiving himself.

Unexpectedly, he finds himself embroiled in murder, and discovers he can go places and talk to people in ways the police cannot.

If you’re a fan of The Grantchester Mysteries, you will recognize the story line. The first series has shown on PBS here in the United States; the second has recently completed filming in the U.K. and will be aired in 2016 on ITV and (it’s hoped) PBS. Actor James Norton plays the title character of Canon Sidney Chambers.

The series is based on the short story collections of author and film producer James Runcie. The first book in the series is Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death, a collection of six mystery stories featuring the canon, four of which were filmed as episodes in the PBS series.

In “The Shadow of Death,” what looks like an obvious suicide turns out to be something else entirely. In “A Question of Trust,” an expensive engagement ring goes missing at an engagement party. “First, Do No Harm” concerns the suspicions of the local coroner about elderly people dying a little too soon before their times. In “A Matter of Time,” a young woman is strangled in a London nightclub in Soho, apparently in full view of everyone there (including Sidney, who loves jazz). “The Lost Holbein” concerns the forgery and theft of a valuable painting of Anne Boleyn. And in “Honourable Men,” a local aristocrat is killed during a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Casear.

In the first story, Chambers develops a friendship with the local police inspector, Geordie Keating, a friendship that becomes a central feature of each of the stories.

The first four stories formed the basis of the four television episodes of The Grantchester Mysteries, but as television producers tend to do, a number of liberties were taken with the written stories. Relationships were condensed and combined; story lines were greatly simplified. And few of Sidney’s occasional spiritual ruminations are included on television. While a fan of the TV series, I found myself liking Runcie’s stories more – they’re more thoughtful, more nuanced, and a bit more provocative. And a one-night stand between Sidney and a jazz singer in London that is featured in one of the television episodes is nowhere to be found in the written stories.

James Runcie

Runcie has published two other Sidney Chambers mysteries – The Perils of Night (2013) and The Problem of Evil (2014), with the fourth in the series, The Forgiveness of Sins, being published this year. He’s also written four novels. In 2014, he explained in an article for the Telegraph how the inspiration for Sidney Chambers came from his father, the late Robert Runcie, the former archbishop of Canterbury.

If you’re familiar with the format of John Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey stories, you’ll be comfortable with the format of The Grantchester Mysteries – a collection of short stories that share characters and themes and come to seem like a novel.

Related: The trailer from Grantchester’s introduction in 2014:

Top photograph: James Norton as Canon Sidney Chambers in The Shadow of Death.