Father Brown Stories (Penguin Popular Classics) [Paperback]

G K Chesterton (Author)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Popular Classics | Publication Date: November 27, 1997

Immortalized in these famous stories, G. K. Chesterton's endearing amateur sleuth has entertained countless generations of readers. For, as his admirers know, Father Brown's cherubic face and unworldly simplicity, his glasses and his huge umbrella, disguise a quite uncanny understanding of the criminal mind at work. This edition includes seven tales from a number of G. K. Chesterton's "Father Brown" books.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

G. K. Chesterton was born in 1874 and educated at St Paul's School, where, despite his efforts to achieve honourable oblivion at the bottom of his class, he was singled out as boy with distinct literary promise. Probably his most famous stories arethose of 'Father Brown', but he wrote about every conceivable subject under the sun. He died in 1936.

From AudioFile

The quiet, inconspicuous Roman Catholic priest, Father Brown, serves souls and, on the side, solves mysteries. Flo Gibson reads twelve stories of bizarre murders and strange mysteries, which Father Brown ably solves. Gibson's unique and somewhat raspy alto voice enables her to read each of the male characters convincingly. Frequently, the characters speak with French accents, which Gibson delivers with expertise and realism. She narrates in an American-sounding English; her British accent also sounds authentic. Gibson uses a variety of emotional responses, which heighten the appeal of the stories and the enjoyment of the listener. P.A.J. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Popular Clas (November 27, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140622594
• ISBN-13: 978-0140622591
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,330,579 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The knowledge of good and evil, June 24, 2008

By 

Jay Dickson (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Father Brown Stories (Penguin Popular Classics) (Paperback)

Part of the pleasure of G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories is always waiting for his mild-mannered detective hero to move in from the margins of each mystery story and assume center stage halfway through when the central crisis becomes apparent. Unlike Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown never dominates the frame tales and so his inevitable ascendancy (after having been neglected by the other characters as ineffective and uninteresting) is always a real pleasure; it seems to play into Chesterton's ideas about Catholicism as being unfairly overlooked as anti-rationalist and superstitious when actually, he argues, it is the very reverse. Contemporary readers may take a bit of pause at father Brown's relationship with the French rogue Flambeau, who starts out as a supercriminal but then--after being repeatedly outwitted by the priest and having undergone many long mysterious talks with him--becomes his bosom companion, especially given Chesterton's odd emphasis given to Flambeau's tremendous physical virility and his lack of explanation about what the two are always doing traveling together in the later stories. All of these well-chosen short stories are terrific (and beautifully atmospheric), but the best include the brilliant "The Queer Feet" (which provides the famous quotation later used to such effect in BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, another study of Catholicism and class difference), "The Hammer of God," and "The Perishing of the Pendragons."

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Reading, October 10, 2007

By 

Meg (Cincinnati, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Father Brown Stories (Penguin Popular Classics) (Paperback)

Reading this book as I ate my lunch provided me with some of the best food-reading I've done. I cannot eat without reading, and these short stories were clever and entertaining. I'd love to give this book as a gift.