T he sixth installment in the Grantchester Mysteries series, now a major PBS television series as well. The sixth book in the James Runcie’s much-loved Granchester Mystery series, which has been adapted for Masterpiece's Grantchester starring James Norton, sees full-time priest, part-time detective Sidney Chambers plunged back into sleuthing when he discovers a body in a bluebell wood. It is May 1971 and the Cambridgeshire countryside is bursting into summer. Attending to his paternal duties, Archdeacon Sidney Chambers is walking in the woods with his daughter Anna and their aging Labrador, Byron, when they stumble upon a body. Beside the dead man lies a basket of wild flowers, all poisonous. And so it is that Sidney is thrust into another murder investigation, entering a world of hippies, folk singers, and psychedelic plants, where love triangles and permissive behavior seem to hide something darker. Despite the tranquil appearance of the Diocese of Ely, there is much to keep Sidney and his old friend, Detective Inspector Geordie Keating, as busy as ever. An historic religious text vanishes from a Cambridge college; Sidney’s former flame, Amanda Richmond, gets a whiff of art-world corruption; and his nephew disappears in the long, hot summer of 1976. Meanwhile, Sidney comes face to face with the divine mysteries of life and love while wrestling with earthly problems--from parish scandals and an alarmingly progressive new secretary to his own domestic misdemeanors, the challenges of parenthood and a great loss. "James Runcie has written the coziest of cozy murder mysteries. Taken individually, each of these clerical whodunits poses a clever puzzle for armchair detectives. Viewed as a collective study of British life as it was lived when Elizabeth II first ascended the throne, these stories present a consistently charming and occasionally cutting commentary on 'a postwar landscape full of industry, promise and concrete." - Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review " The author is a master wordsmith, writing in delicate, lyrical prose . . . Readers definitely are in for a treat when they meet this gentlemanly but worldly man of the cloth. I cannot but hope there are many more cases in his future." - Mystery Scene " Chambers turns out to be a winning clergyman-sleuth, and Runcie's literary authority is repeatedly demonstrated in the construction of his elegant tales . . . There is no denying the winning charm of these artfully fashioned mysteries." - Independent James Runcie is an award-winning film-maker, playwright and literary curator. He is the author of twelve novels that have been translated into twelve languages, including the seven books in the Grantchester Mysteries series. He has been Artistic Director of the Bath Literature Festival, Head of Literature and Spoken Word at the Southbank Centre, London, and Commissioning Editor for Arts on BBC Radio 4. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in Scotland. www.jamesruncie.com www.grantchestermysteries.com @james_runcie Sidney Chambers and the Persistence of Love The Grantchester Mysteries By JAMES RUNCIE Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Copyright © 2017 James Runcie All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-63286-794-0 Contents The Bluebell Wood, 1, Authenticity, 43, Insufficient Evidence, 102, Ex Libris, 153, The Long Hot Summer, 212, The Persistence of Love, 267, CHAPTER 1 The Bluebell Wood Saturday 8 May, 1971 May was Sidney's best-loved month. After an overture of daffodils and tulips, the summer orchestra tuned to the sound of blackbirds, wood pigeons and the returning swifts. Each day outpaced its predecessor with new provision: an acceleration of green, a stretching light. The smell of wild garlic rose up in the hedgebanks. Warmth returned, and Hildegard served up the first asparagus of the year, with salmon, early peas, mint and new potatoes, followed by Sidney's favourite fruit: rhubarb, poached with ginger and honey. Now aged seven and a half, Anna was just finishing her first year of Junior School and she was in the middle of a wild-flower project inspired by W. Keble Martin's Concise British Flora in Colour. Two years before, she had written to the author for advice, and the ninety-year-old priest had replied on a postcard to say that the natural world offered endless discovery, infinite possibilities. If she learned to appreciate the landscape around her then she would never be bored or lonely. Curiosity would keep her young. Father and daughter were out walking through Nine Acre Wood by the River Ouse with Byron, their beloved Labrador, alongside them. They ambled past the oak and ash trees, tall by a stream edged with swathes of ramsons and marsh marigolds, then went on through high cow parsley and flowering crab apple until they reached a sunlit clearing filled with early wood violets, herb Robert, meadow buttercups and sanicle. This was a time for simple pleasures; a father,