Mystery and ministry in Grantchester and beyond
Detectives, like pastors, examine the unknowable to reveal the knowable.
In Grantchester their skins are white;
They bathe by day, they bathe by night;
The women there do all they ought;
The men observe the Rules of Thought.
They love the Good; they worship Truth;
They laugh uproariously in youth;
(And when they get to feeling old,
They up and shoot themselves, I’m told).
—Rupert Brooke,
“The Old Vicarage, Grantchester” (1912)
The clergy detective is a character type at least as old as the fourth century BCE. In the book of Daniel, the prophet Daniel solves mysteries on behalf of the Jewish diaspora in Babylon. In the story in the Apocrypha titled Susanna, Daniel interrogates the lecherous elders who have been spurned by the beautiful Susanna. Through wit and intuition, Daniel is able to lead the elders into perjury and expose their lies like an ancient Near Eastern Columbo.
