Rating: 4/5
Review:
Very enjoyable stories
I enjoyed the six stories which make up this
book. Set in 1953-54, the book has a slight feel of a Sunday evening TV
programme in the Miss Marple/Call The Midwife tradition. It is
well-written, engaging and gentle in tone and also has some moral
weight, albeit lightly worn. Sidney Chambers is a likeable protagonist
and the plots are interesting without being sensational. Sidney's moral
and ecclesiastical musings add an interesting depth and the whole thing
carries you along very nicely.
Runcie's style is readable and he creates believable characters who behave plausibly, which is not always the case in detective stories. I thought the period was quite well done although, as someone who was born around that time and who remembers life just a few years later, I wasn't altogether convinced by it. The 50s' sense of recovering from the war and still rebuilding and making do and mending wasn't really there, and while the language was largely convincing, people didn't use modern phrases like "on a weekly basis" and "it sends out the wrong signals." Perhaps I'm nit-picking a little but those of us who were there (and I suspect that there will be a lot of readers who were) will be rather thrown out of the atmosphere by this.
Minor niggles aside, I can recommend this as a charming book with more substance than may at first appear and a very enjoyable read.
Runcie's style is readable and he creates believable characters who behave plausibly, which is not always the case in detective stories. I thought the period was quite well done although, as someone who was born around that time and who remembers life just a few years later, I wasn't altogether convinced by it. The 50s' sense of recovering from the war and still rebuilding and making do and mending wasn't really there, and while the language was largely convincing, people didn't use modern phrases like "on a weekly basis" and "it sends out the wrong signals." Perhaps I'm nit-picking a little but those of us who were there (and I suspect that there will be a lot of readers who were) will be rather thrown out of the atmosphere by this.
Minor niggles aside, I can recommend this as a charming book with more substance than may at first appear and a very enjoyable read.
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