The Innocence of Father Brown

I decided to combine my love of mysteries and G. K, Chesterton and read The Innocence of Father Brown, the first collection of Father Brown stories.

I had read a couple of the stories before - "The Blue Cross" and "The Invisible Man" - but none of the others.

They were entertaining and amusing. But I will admit I figured out a couple of them before the end, and a couple seemed not to follow the fairness rules for detective fiction that Chesterton himself would later champion. *

Still - a good read. Well worth the time, I'll gladly read other Father Brown stories in the future.

* Detection Club Rules (circa 1930)

Club’:

1. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.
2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
5. No chinamen must figure in the story (today, sounds racially insensitive, but at the time too many pulp mysteries relied on racially stereotyped characters and villains, among them being the evil Asian ones).
6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
7. The detective himself must not himself commit the crime.
8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.
9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

Pax et bonum