The Innocence of Father Brown

G.K. Chesterton

Father Brown is one of the Hounds greatest crime fighters and his creator, Chesterton, one of the masters of the short crime story. Father Brown is the second among the Great literary detectives, right after Sherlock Holmes. In some ways, Father Brown was a continuation of what Chesterton wrote in his classic Orthodoxy.The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) is the first of five collections of mystery stories by G. K. Chesterton starring an unimposing but surprisingly capable Roman Catholic priest. Father Browns ability to uncover the truth behind the mystery continually surpasses that of the experts around him, who are fooled into underestimation by the priests unimpressive outward appearance and, often, by their own prejudices about Christianity.

The Man Who Knew Too Much

G.K. Chesterton

This is a detective story collection of Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Most of the stories in the collection are about the hermit of society, Horn Fischer, who has the talent to solve crimes. Journalist Harold March was walking around the outskirts of Turnbull and met the bizarre Horn Fisher, whom he immediately made friends with. No sooner did they get to know each other when they became witnesses of the disaster: the car flew off the road and fell into the abyss. Fisher and March approached the crash site and identified Sir Humphrey Turnbull, the local rich man. It turned out that he was shot, so that he fell into the abyss. New acquaintances take up the investigation.

The Man Who Was Thursday. A Nightmare

G.K. Chesterton

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare was written by G.K. Chesterton and published in 1908. Ostensibly about a secret policeman investigating anarchists, it becomes a surreal and philosophical novel. It is a metaphysical thriller, and a detective story filled with poetry and politics. Gabriel Syme is a poet and a police detective. Lucian Gregory is a poet and a bomb-throwing anarchist. Syme infiltrates a secret meeting of anarchists and becomes Thursday, one of the seven members of the Central Anarchist Council. He soon learns, however, that he is not the only one in disguise, and the nightmare begins...The Man Who Was Thursday has a Mission plot, although the final confrontation with the Antagonist is rather a bizarre one.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

G.K. Chesterton

Meet Auberon Quin. He is a man to whom the world is a punchline; a dangerous man, for he cares for nothing but a joke. And meet Adam Wayne to whom the joke is quite serious. When Quin is appointed King of England, he decides to turn London into a medieval carnival for his own amusement. When Adam Wayne is appointed Provost of Notting Hill, he proposes to be patriotic about it and takes the new order of things seriously, organizing a Notting Hill army to fight invaders from other neighborhoods. Amidst the chaos of confusion, the stirring speeches, the epic battles, and the all-pervading Chesterton wit, The Napoleon of Notting Hill is a cry for renewed life in a deadened world a call that compels mankind to fight for the small things, if only for the sake of fighting for something.

The Return of Don Quixote

G.K. Chesterton

Chestertons last novel is a reflection of his first novel. Michael Herne, the librarian at Seawood Abbey, is asked to play the part of a medieval king. He not only takes his role seriously by thoroughly researching the Middle Ages, when the play is concluded, he refuses to take off the costume... Set in the early 20th Century, this is the intriguing story of the rise of a new Don Quixote who introduces a medieval government into the world of big business.

The Scandal of Father Brown

G.K. Chesterton

Chesterton again allows us to accompany Father Brown, preternaturally-unbiased master of human nature, as he stumbles across another series of murders and mysteries. These stories in this series are not as compact as those in other books, notably The Innocence of Father Brown, but they have the same magnetic power to draw the reader in. As ever, Chesterton is interested not only in delivering first rate detective stories, but of describing human nature. His characters are flawed and biased, all blind in their own way, which is what makes it so difficult to see the truth that lies before them. Father Brown, ever kind and imperturbable, nearly always sees right through to the heart of the matter. Posing as a humble parish priest, which he is, he somehow sees beyond the class boundaries which it is Chestertons special gift to point out and puncture.

The Secret of Father Brown

G.K. Chesterton

Have you wondered how the great detectives solved their cases? In The Secret of Father Brown, while visiting Flambeaus house Father Brown meets a curious American who has to know as some of his countrymen think Father Brown is using mystical powers. The fourth of the Father Brown detective story collections has something the first three did not: a framing sequence at the beginning and end, in which Father Brown explains to a curious person his method for solving crimes he becomes the criminal. In this collection he becomes several jewel thieves and murderers, all of whom carry out their crimes in bizarre circumstances. Father Brown, or rather Chesterton, takes opportunity on occasion to indulge in a bit of Catholic apologetic or homiletic, but it never takes over the story: it makes Father Brown that much more a priest and not just a mystery-solving machine.

The Wisdom of Father Brown

G.K. Chesterton

In Chestertons second Father Brown book, The Wisdom of Father Brown, we get a series of bizarre, sometimes dangerous mysteries that Father Brown must puzzle out. Some of the crimes are simple once Brown explains them, but others are devious, chilling things that are wrapped in Chestertons poetic prose. In the stories that follow, the priest investigates many other mysteries: a sinister voodoo cult, a nobleman with a deformed ear, a gang of Italian thieves, a lie-detector with one major problem (the operator), a girl who is blackmailed for a crime nobody knows she committed, a burning tower, a murder that may be suicide, and a man who is under a horrible death curse. Father Brown solves things by observation and thought, in some ways like Poirot, but in an unassuming and modest manner. The stories are each very different, but are very good reading.