I was recommended this in the course of a ‘book spa’ at a local bookshop. It’s the first in the series of ‘Grantchester Mysteries’ featuring a vicar with a habit of stumbling into crime and then solving it. This volume is set very precisely in the early 1950s.
Plenty of detail that I recognise with the Cambridge location and the churchiness. Sidney is a Corpuscle like me, though I wonder how comfortable he would have been with his broad churchmanship among the very High Church Fellowship* there at that time.
I enjoyed reading the mixture of murders and thefts to be solved, though I prefer my crime to be more densely plotted (partly a consequence of the short story format) and rather darker; even Sidney’s horrific wartime experiences do not seem to have affected him much.
Inevitably I spotted some possible slips and anachronisms. At one point Sidney cycles along Downing St and turns into Trumpington St after passing St Bene’t’s Church. Is St Botolph’s meant (even that isn’t quite right unless he diverts into Botolph Lane) or does he maybe go round via Free School Lane in order to check his Corpus pigeon hole? And I don’t think that foot-washing on Maundy Thursday happened in Church of England churches at this time; asking around friends of an age to remember suggests that it was introduced around 1970 (possibly taken from Catholic practice after Vatican II?) I can’t comment on the accuracy of the scenes involving jazz, and although Sidney is said to be a keen cricketer, this subject doesn’t come up again.
I would be happy to read others in the series without making it a priority. Although my supply of unread P.D. James is running out, so if I want my fix of Book of Common Prayer/murder combo, maybe this is where to go.
*Around this period a visitor to Little St Mary’s church observed of the rather sentimental Good Shepherd statue there, ‘I suppose this is where the less intellectual of your congregation make their devotions?’ to which the reply was ‘No, mostly Fellows of Corpus!’
[I have now also read the fifth in the series, Sidney Chambers and the Dangers of Temptation. On the lookout for anachronisms, I noticed a reference to lemon drizzle cake in a story set in the summer of 1968. The cake seems to have been introduced to the world, via the Jewish Chronicle, in 1967 so just possible, but it was not known by that name in its early years.]