Penguin Classics: The Complete Father Brown Stories

‘My first case was just a small private affair about a man’s head being cut off’

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.

In his introduction, Michael D. Hurley reads the Father Brown stories in literary but also in philosophical terms, placing them within the context of Chesterton’s other writings. This edition also includes a chronology, further reading and notes.

Edited with an introduction and notes by Michael D. Hurley