The Father Brown Reader

Young readers can now delight in Chesterton's wit and storytelling in these adaptations of 4 popular Father Brown stories: "The Blue Cross," "The Strange Feet," "The Flying Stars," and "The Absence of Mr. Glass." In each story Chesterton includes a delightful twist and the clever sleuthing of Father Brown.

Beloved clerical sleuth in roster of remarkable cases: "The Blue Cross," "The Sins of Prince Saradine," "The Sign of the Broken Sword," "The Man in the Passage," "The Perishing of the Pendragons," more.

In these stories, the notorious criminal Flambeau has reformed and is now a great detective. He is often aided by his friend and confidant Father Brown.

The complete adventures of the well-loved clerical sleuth, collected in one brilliant volume. Shabby and lumbering, with a face like a Norfolk dumpling, Father Brown makes for an improbable super-sleuth. But his innocence is the secret of his success: refusing the scientific method of detection, he adopts instead an approach of simple sympathy, interpreting each crime as a work of art, and each criminal as a man no worse than himself. This complete edition brings together all of the Father Brown stories, including two not previously available in Penguin: 'The Donnington Affair', in which Chesterton rises to the challenge of solving a murder-mystery half written by someone else (Max Pemberton), and 'The Mask of Midas', which was found in Chesterton's papers after his death. It also includes an introduction and notes by Michael D. Hurley. G.K. Chesteron was born in 1874. He attended the Slade School of Art, where he appears to have suffered a nervous breakdown, before turning his hand to journalism. A prolific writer throughout his life, his best-known books include The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), The Man Who Knew Too Much(1922), The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) and the Father Brown stories. Chesterton converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922 and died in 1938. Michael D. Hurley is a Lecturer in English at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of St Catharine's College. He has written widely on English literature from the nineteenth century to the present day, with an emphasis on poetry and poetics. His book on G. K. Chesterton was published in 2011.

G. K. Chesterton's The Complete Father Brown Stories Father Brown originally appeared in 1911 in The Innocence of Father Brown, one of the most oddly pleasant and charming characters to emerge from English detective fiction. G.K. Chesterton's genial priest was thrust into the forefront of quirky sleuths with that first collection of stories. This complete collection comprises all of the favourite Father Brown stories, demonstrating a calm wit and compassion that has endeared him to many, while solving his problems in a very convincing manner using a combination of imagination and compassionate worldliness.

Father Brown, a full-time Catholic priest, and part-time amateur detective returns in this third collection of short stories by G. K. Chesterton. This time Father Brown is investigating alone; his sidekick, the former criminal Flambeau, is nowhere to be seen. Father Brown has to solve a murder (including his own!) in each story, and since several also appear to involve the supernatural, he has ample opportunity to elaborate on his thoughts concerning it.

Chesterton portrays Father Brown as a short, stumpy Roman Catholic priest, with shapeless clothes, a large umbrella, and an uncanny insight into human evil. In "The Head of Caesar" he is "formerly priest of Cobhole in Essex, and now working in London." He makes his first appearance in the story "The Blue Cross" published in 1910 and continues to appear throughout forty-eight short stories in five volumes, with two more stories discovered and published posthumously, often assisted in his crime-solving by the reformed criminal M. Hercule Flambeau. Brown's abilities are also considerably shaped by his experience as a priest and confessor. In "The Blue Cross," when asked by Flambeau, who has been masquerading as a priest, how he knew of all sorts of criminal "horrors," Father Brown responds: "Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil?" He also states how he knew Flambeau was not really a priest: "You attacked reason. It's bad theology." The stories normally contain a rational explanation of who the murderer was and how Brown worked it out. He always emphasises rationality; some stories, such as "The Miracle of Moon Crescent," "The Oracle of the Dog," "The Blast of the Book" and "The Dagger with Wings," poke fun at initially sceptical characters who become convinced of a supernatural explanation for some strange occurrence, but Father Brown easily sees the perfectly ordinary, natural explanation. In fact, he seems to represent an ideal of a devout but considerably educated and "civilised" clergyman. That can be traced to the influence of Roman Catholic thought on Chesterton. Father Brown is characteristically humble and is usually rather quiet, except to say something profound. Although he tends to handle crimes with a steady, realistic approach, he believes in the supernatural as the greatest reason of all.

The thousand arms of the forest were grey, and its million fingers silver. In a sky of dark green-blue-like slate the stars were bleak and brilliant like splintered ice. All that thickly wooded and sparsely tenanted countryside was stiff with a bitter and brittle frost. The black hollows between the trunks of the trees looked like bottomless, black caverns of that Scandinavian hell, a hell of incalculable cold. Even the square stone tower of the church looked northern to the point of heathenry, as if it were some barbaric tower among the sea rocks of Iceland. It was a queer night for anyone to explore a churchyard. But, on the other hand, perhaps it was worth exploring.

The Blue Cross (Father Brown) by G. K. Chesterton