Sidney Chambers the Vicar of Grantchester is a thirty-two-year-old bachelor. Tall with dark brown hair eyes the colour of hazelnuts & a reassuringly gentle manner Sidney is an unconventional clergyman & can go where the police cannot. Together with his roguish friend Inspector Geordie Keating Sidney inquires into the suspect suicide of a Cambridge solicitor a scandalous jewellery theft at a New Years Eve dinner party the unexplained death of a well-known jazz promoter & a shocking art forgery the disclosure of which puts a close friend in danger. Sidney discovers that being a detective like being a clergyman means that you are never off duty. Nonetheless he manages to find time for a keen interest in cricket warm beer hot jazz & the works of Tolstoy & Shakespeare
- as well as a curious fondness for a German widow three years his junior. From the son of the former Archbishop of Canterbury this is the first of The Grantchester Mysteries six detective novels spanning thirty years of British history
- from the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 to the wedding of Charles & Diana in 1981
- featuring the unforgettable vicar & sleuth Sidney Chambers.