The Complete Father Brown [Hardcover]

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1032 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday Books
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568650981
• ISBN-13: 978-1568650982
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,592,687 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars A Detective Who is Outside His Box, November 27, 2006

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Acute Observer (N. Jersey Shore) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Father Brown (Hardcover)

The 'Preface' by Auberon Waugh tells about Chesterton's personality and habits. GKC had sympathy of the people and against the rich rulers (p.viii). His `Father Brown' stories were popular on both sides of the Atlantic (p.x). Chesterton was known for his love of paradoxes, "truth standing on its head to get attention". The `Foreword' by R.T. Bond tells how Chesterton invented the character of Father Brown after a discussion with a curate, who told him about practices unimaginable to Chesterton. Later he heard college students wonder what a curate could know about real life. Chesterton's detective would be ordinary appearing, even dull, individual. Yet he would figure out a mystery that seemingly wiser men could not fathom. Instead of analyzing clues, Father Brown tried to get inside the mind of the murderer to determine his motive and identity. [Today we would call that profiling.]

This book contains the five volumes of the Father Brown stories. `The Innocence of Father Brown' and `The Wisdom of Father Brown' both contain twelve stories. `The Incredulity of Father Brown' has eight stories. `The Secret of Father Brown' has ten stories. `The Scandal of Father Brown' has nine stories. These stories are always entertaining and amusing, even if some details are now as extinct as a horse and buggy, or may seem improbable.