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      Introduction: Meet Father Brown

      Father Brown is a fictional character created by English novelist G. K. Chesterton, who stars in 53 short stories, later compiled in five books (with 2 strays). Chesterton based the character on Father John O’Connor (1870–1952), a parish priest in Bradford who was involved in Chesterton’s conversion to Catholicism in 1922. The relationship was recorded by O’Connor in his 1937 book Father Brown on Chesterton.

      *

      Father Brown is a short, stumpy Catholic priest, “formerly of Cobhole in Essex, and now working in London,” with shapeless clothes and a large umbrella, and uncanny insight into human evil.

      He makes his first appearance in the story “The Blue Cross” and continues through the five volumes of short stories, often assisted by the reformed criminal M.Hercule Flambeau. Father Brown also appears in a story “The Donnington Affair” that has a rather curious history. In the October 1914 issue of the obscure magazine The Premier, Sir Max Pemberton published the first part of the story, inviting a number of detective story writers, including Chesterton, to use their talents to solve the mystery of the murder described. Chesterton and Father Brown’s solution followed in the November issue. The story was first reprinted in the Chesterton Review (Winter 1981, pp. 1–35) and in the book Thirteen Detectives.

      Unlike the more famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown’s methods tend to be intuitive rather than deductive. He explains his method in “The Secret of Father Brown”—

      “You see, I had murdered them all myself… I had planned out each of the crimes very carefully. I had thought out exactly how a thing like that could be done, and in what style or state of mind a man could really do it. And when I was quite sure that I felt exactly like the murderer myself, of course I knew who he was.”

      Father 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,” he 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 a reason why he knew Flambeau was not a priest: “You attacked reason. It’s bad theology.” And indeed, the stories normally contain a rational explanation of who the murderer was and how Brown worked it out.

      Father Brown 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 skeptical characters who become convinced of a supernatural explanation for some strange occurrence, while Father Brown easily sees the perfectly ordinary, natural explanation. In fact, he seems to represent an ideal of a devout, yet considerably educated and “civilised” clergyman. This can be traced to the influence of neo-scholastic thought on Chesterton.

      Father Brown is characteristically humble, and is usually rather quiet; when he does talk, he almost always says something profound. Although he tends to handle crimes with a steady, realistic approach, he believes in the supernatural as the greatest reason of all.

      *

      Father Brown was the perfect vehicle for conveying Chesterton’s view of the world and, of all of his characters, is perhaps closest to Chesterton’s own point of view, or at least the effect of his point of view. Father Brown solves his crimes through a strict reasoning process more concerned with spiritual and philosophic truths rather than scientific details, making him an almost equal counterbalance with Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, whose stories Chesterton read and admired. However, the Father Brown series commenced before Chesterton’s own conversion to Catholicism.

      The Blue Cross

      Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering ribbon of sea, the boat touched Harwich and let loose a swarm of folk like flies, among whom the man we must follow was by no means conspicuous—nor wished to be. There was nothing notable about him, except a slight contrast between the holiday gaiety of his clothes and the official gravity of his face. His clothes included a slight, pale grey jacket, a white waistcoat, and a silver straw hat with a grey-blue ribbon. His lean face was dark by contrast, and ended in a curt black beard that looked Spanish and suggested an Elizabethan ruff. He was smoking a cigarette with the seriousness of an idler. There was nothing about him to indicate the fact that the grey jacket covered a loaded revolver, that the white waistcoat covered a police card, or that the straw hat covered one of the most powerful intellects in Europe. For this was Valentin himself, the head of the Paris police and the most famous investigator of the world; and he was coming from Brussels to London to make the greatest arrest of the century.

      Flambeau was in England. The police of three countries had tracked the great criminal at last from Ghent to Brussels, from Brussels to the Hook of Holland; and it was conjectured that he would take some advantage of the unfamiliarity and confusion of the Eucharistic Congress, then taking place in London. Probably he would travel as some minor clerk or secretary connected with it; but, of course, Valentin could not be certain; nobody could be certain about Flambeau.

      It is many years now since this colossus of crime suddenly ceased keeping the world in a turmoil; and when he ceased, as they said after the death of Roland, there was a great quiet upon the earth. But in his best days (I mean, of course, his worst) Flambeau was a figure as statuesque and international as the Kaiser. Almost every morning the daily paper announced that he had escaped the consequences of one extraordinary crime by committing another. He was a Gascon of gigantic stature and bodily daring; and the wildest tales were told of his outbursts of athletic humour; how he turned the juge d’instruction upside down and stood him on his head, “to clear his mind”; how he ran down the Rue de Rivoli with a policeman under each arm. It is due to him to say that his fantastic physical strength was generally employed in such bloodless though undignified scenes; his real crimes were chiefly those of ingenious and wholesale robbery. But each of his thefts was almost a new sin, and would make a story by itself. It

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