The Shadow of Death is volume 1 of the Grantchester Mysteries (set in Cambridge) by James Runcie. As the son of a clergyman, James Runcie makes Canon Sidney Chambers a believable and likable character who delves into the mysteries of crime investigations. There are several stories in The Shadow Death combined by common threads. The stories are reminiscent of Father Brown and set in about the same time period following WWII. ITV is currently filming the Grantchester series and hopefully it will be picked up by PBS perhaps as part of the Masterpiece Mysteries series.From the cover:
Sidney Chambers, the vicar of Grantchester, is a thirty-two-year-old bachelor. Tall, with dark brown hair, eyes the color of hazelnuts, and a reassuring gentle manner, Sidney is an unconventional clergyman and can go where the police cannot.
In these six interconnected mysteries, Sidney, together with his roguish friend Inspector Geordie Keating, inquire into a variety of crimes, including the suspect suicide of a Cambridge solicitor, a scandalous jewelry theft and the unexplained death of a well-known jazz promoter's daughter.
