A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil is the third installment in the Grantchester Mysteries series.  I reviewed the first two books of the series on the blog here and here .  This installment brings some major life changes as Sidney and his new wife Hildegard enjoy their first year of marriage. In the first mystery Sidney contemplates the problem of evil in the form of a serial killer targeting clergy.  Each killing is preceded by an avian warning, and the ever irritating, intrepid reporter Helen Randall returns and, troublingly, entices Inspector Keating.  In another mystery Sidney is a material witness to the theft of a painting from a Cambridge gallery in which a nude woman singing a French tune creates a diversion. In a later mystery Sidney is reluctantly roped in to portraying a priest in a local film production when he witnesses an accidental drowning.  However, something about the whole incident does not sit right with Sidney (of course) and af...

In The Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming is the first in a mystery series starring an Episcopalian priest, Clare Ferguson, and Miller's Kill chief of police, Russ Van Alstyne.  I mentioned in a previous entry there was a second mystery novel that I'd read and liked well enough but didn't like the characters enough to want to read the rest of the series.  This is that novel.  This title was on the book club list for a library in the Philadelphia area that our book club will be reading next year, and I decided that I wanted to read it too. The Reverend Clare Ferguson is new to Miller's Kill and St. Alban's parish, a tiny town and Episcopalian parish in upstate New York.  One bitterly cold winter evening Clare, just two weeks into shepherding her new flock, discovers a newborn baby boy bundled in blankets inside a box left on the steps of her church.  When the body of a local teenage girl is discovered in the snow out on the frigid shores of the kill, V...

Still Life is Louise Penny's first novel in the series that features Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.   Life is a good book and a gripping mystery; however, the characters didn't make enough of an impact on me to want to read the entire series.  This was also the case with the next book I'll review. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is called to the tiny village of Three Pines to investigate the suspicious death of Jane Neal, a beloved local woman found dead of a mysterious wound on a path through the woods near her house.  In addition to the difficulty of proving the death was a homicide warranting a thorough investigation or a hunting accident, the investigation is hampered by the negligence and arrogance of Agent Yvette Nichol, new to Gamache's team.  Meanwhile, Gamache, master of observation and detail, is convinced the suspicious death has roots sprung from seeds planted and left festering for decades. I have to say that Nichol really irked me. Okay, if I'm...