The Wisdom of Father Brown

Father Brown #2

by G.K. Chesterton

The absence of Mr. Glass
The Paradise of Thieves
The duel of Dr. Hirsch
The man in the passage
The mistake of the machine
The head of Caesar
The purple wig
The perishing of the Pendragons
The God of the Gongs
The salad of Colonel Cray
The strange crime of John Boulnois
The fairy tale of Father Brown

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Short Stories, Classics, Crime, Audiobook, Detective

200 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1914

About the author

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic.

He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.

Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.

Reviews

[Batgrl (Book Data Kept Elsewhere) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've only read one Father Brown short story before this, and was very much enjoying the others. And then I had to come abruptly into the racism in the story The God of the Gongs. If it hadn't been for that story I could have rated this a lot higher, rather than sitting and pondering the casual racism of the time - 1910 for this collection. The one story almost made me want to rate the whole as a one star - but to be fair, that's based on that one story, and how angry it made me. (I've been waffling between two and three stars for this, and it's completely hinging on my reaction to that one story.)

As an aside I should mention that it's not that I'm not used to racism in stories from this time, sadly. In fact I often wonder if, when some schools/parents raise issues about teaching Huckleberry Finn if the teachers shouldn't have students read some of the era's stories with overt and casual racism that have characters much less well developed than Jim. As much as I dislike it, I don't think we should refrain from making it clear that these thoughts/attitudes/stereotypes were in a lot of the literature. There are a a few authors I still enjoy despite their racism - Lovecraft for instance - but that doesn't mean I don't stop and cringe every time it comes up, even if I expect it. I just can't overlook this, even with the (poor) excuse of "that's the way everyone wrote/thought." When no, not everyone did. So there's the struggle - you can't exactly avoid it, but you - well, I - certainly can't enjoy it.

While several of the other stories have Italian or French characters that are stereotypical, the black characters of The God of the Gongs are much, much worse. It's not just the repeated use of the word nigger (or the fact that one character's name is Nigger Ned) - it's the way all the black characters are described.

(72% in) "...He was buttoned and buckled up to his bursting eyeballs in the most brilliant fashion. A tall black hat was tilted on his broad black head - a hat of the sort that the French wit has compared to eight mirrors. But somehow the black man was like the black hat. He also was black, and yet his glossy skin flung back the light at eight angles or more. It is needless to say that he wore white spats and a white slip inside his waistcoat. The red flower stood up in his button hole aggressively, as if it had suddenly grown there. And in the way he carried his cane in one hand and his cigar in the other there was a certain attitude - an attitude we must always remember when we talk of racial prejudices: something innocent and insolent - the cake walk.

"Sometimes," said Flambeau, looking after him, "I'm not surprised that they lynch them." "

If you can't understand why, after reading the quote, there were numerous things there that pissed me off - well, I can't help you. Besides the stereotypes in the description of dress there's the concept that you can wear clothes and walk in a way which supposedly everyone reads as insolent. And the line about lynching - just, no. Sorry, can't deal with the illogic and unfairness of this portrayal.

It doesn't make it any better that Father Brown is given a speech or two which I'm going to assume is supposed to preach tolerance:

(76% in) "...I dare say he has some Italians with him, but our amiable friends are not Italians. They are octoroons and African half-bloods of various shades, but I fear we English think all foreigners are much the same so long as they are dark and dirty. Also," he added, with a smile, "I fear the English decline to draw any fine distinction between the moral character produced by my religion and that which blooms out of Voodoo."

I get the attempted message here - but after the previous quote, plus more I've not quoted, it's not enough. The ugliness of "everyone thinks this way" blots out any message of tolerance. Especially when the end of the story has to do with all blacks in the UK being under suspicion of the law and the public because of the murders by a group. Trying to preach tolerance in this context makes Chesterton seem smug, self-satisfied and completely unaware of how much stronger the stereotypes are than the platitudes.

I enjoy the way Chesterton writes, but I'm not totally sold on the character of Brown (I got tired of the repeated descriptions of how "child-like" he is). Still if anything keeps me from finishing the rest of Chesterton (I have several more ebooks) it will be the bad impressions of this one story. It's going to take me a while to get those images out of my head.

[Katie Lumsden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some very enjoyable stories.

[MihaElla · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Even in a minute instance, it is best to look first to the main tendencies of Nature. A particular flower may not be dead in early winter, but the flowers are dying; a particular pebble may never be wetted with the tide, but the tide is coming in. To the scientific eye all human history is a series of collective movements, destructions or migrations, like the massacre of flies in winter or the return of birds in spring. Now the root fact in all history is Race. Race produces religion; Race produces legal and ethical wars…”

Providence or kismet or my own lot, and so on and so forth, being in a funny mood, pushed the door open and has introduced me further to The Wisdom of Father Brown , with another set of 12 entertaining and very interesting short stories, which certainly made my eyes sometimes bright with something that might be called a rough shore, or might be amusement 😊
The little priest of the Roman Catholic Church, with a moon, round face, a heavy and long past repair umbrella, and errant hat too, is back in full action and doing his logical, completely reason-based magic to solve either queer and awful human affairs complications, or some hideous foul play enigmas.
This time, speaking of Wisdom, the face of priest Father Brown, commonly complacent and even comic, shows more often a curious frown, because now it is not just a blank curiosity of his first innocence, but a rather creative curiosity which comes when a man has the beginnings of an idea, in other words when it strikes one with some enigmatic smile and reflective process. And, as I insist on a shade of difference, I think the character of Father Brown is a wonder of the world… One last confession, on the impulse of the moment, is that so far I have never guessed, not even once, who was the ‘right’ criminal, which makes me feel unprepared to deal with Father Brown, if I may permit myself the impertinent intimacy, as on one side he enlightens me, but on the other side he is leading me deeper in the dark, that is till the last page of each individual tale where certainly I am fully bathing in the light 😃

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somehow it is hard to imagine Arthur Conan Doyle writing a book called The Wisdom of Sherlock Holmes. Admittedly Dr Watson does call Holmes ‘the best and the wisest man whom I have ever known’, but this is on the occasion of Holmes’ apparent death, and some sentimentality can be forgiven.

For the main part Conan Doyle makes humbler claims about his detective hero. Sherlock Holmes may have a towering intellect, but Conan Doyle makes him a flawed human being. He has vices. His methods are sometimes unethical. Most important of all, he makes serious and even fatal mistakes in his deductions, not all of which can be remedied at the end.

Father Brown by contrast has something of the infallibility of the head of his church, or even of his god. The priest may sometimes be puzzled when the facts have not yet all been presented to him, but his final judgements and his actions are never wrong.

Perhaps that is the reason why we learn almost nothing at all about Father Brown’s personality. We know that he is a priest with an amiable and deceptively insignificant appearance. G K Chesterton tells us that Brown rarely gets to take a holiday, and yet we rarely see him do anything else.

Father Brown is often accompanied by his friend, the thief-turned-detective Flambeau, who is supposedly intelligent but who is always wrong, since Father Brown is the hero. As for Brown’s manner of speaking, it is often in long speeches that employ paradoxes, witticisms and a semi-philosophical style. This might seem more like cleverness than wisdom were it not for the fact that Father Brown is always right.

In this collection of stories, Father Brown solves the mysteries of an unseen thief called Mr Glass, a bandit attack, a man who backs out of a duel, a murderer whose description changes depending on which witness describes him, an escaped convict, a blackmailer with a crooked nose, a man who obstinately refuses to remove his purple wig, a doomed family of aristocrats, a voodoo cult, a man who is cursed while abroad, a man who is killed by a sword, and a crime that took place in the past.

In working out these enigmas, Brown barely falters, and we may well ask why Chesterton is so keen that his hero should be flawless. The reason is not a modest one. It is that Brown is the repository of all of Chesterton’s views of life. So when Father Brown is always right in his investigations, we are supposed to infer that his worldview is similarly unerring.

G K Chesterton’s world is an insular one in which he stands for Catholicism, conservatism and Little England nationalism at a time when the world was moving on. New ideas and new people were coming in from abroad and disrupting the old views. Perhaps they always had been, but in an age where travel, media and communication were improving, the threat may have seemed all that much greater to Chesterton.

Here in the safety of a work of fiction, Chesterton can luxuriate in a world where his hero can make as many sweeping statements, strawman fallacies and anti-rational speeches as he likes, and yet he will be always right, and there will be no intellectual heavyweight to challenge those views. Given how old-fashioned Chesterton’s views are, it is hardly surprising that the murder weapon is more likely to be a sword than a gun in these stories.

Two stories are of especial interest here. One is ‘The Mistake of the Machine’. The title immediately indicates Chesterton’s distrust of science. The machine in question is the lie detector, and Father Brown is eloquent in his criticism of the new innovation:

‘“What sentimentalists men of science are!” exclaimed Father Brown, “and how much sentimental must American men of science be! Who but a Yankee would think of proving anything from heart throbs? Why, they must be as sentimental as a man who thinks a woman is in love with him if she blushes.”’

It is a neatly worded statement, and it is not entirely untrue. Nowadays it is agreed that measuring someone’s heartbeat via a lie detector is an unreliable way to measure a person’s guilt, and for the reasons Father Brown identifies in the story. There may well be other reasons that cause a person’s heart to beat faster.

Where Brown fails is that he cannot resist making generalisations. The assumptions made by inventors of the lie test were not sentimental, and they were not universally held. Chesterton behaves as if good old instinctive wisdom is worth more than science. It has a place too, but what discredited the lie detector in the end was not intuition but further scientific tests.

Similarly in ‘The Strange Crime of John Boulnois’, Father Brown explains his ability to solve crimes in the following way: “I attach a great deal of importance to vague ideas. All those things that ‘aren’t evidence’ are what convinces me.” This is all very well, but that is not the evidence that proves the innocence or guilt of someone in the real world. Indeed the real deciding factor in this case turns out to be the evidence that Brown is so dismissive about – an alibi, and fingerprints on a sword.

However that was not the second story I was talking about as being of especial interest. For this I would choose ‘The God of the Gongs’. The kindest thing we can say about the story is that it has not aged well. Here the enemy that we are up against involves black immigrants and a murderous voodoo cult.

Once again, Chesterton spends a good deal of time despising that which comes from outside his English and Christian worldview, and the story now seems deeply offensive. It is not just the use of the n-word. While this word was beginning to sound offensive when Joseph Conrad used it in a book title in 1897, it continued to be casually used in respectable society until as late as the 1940s.

No, the real objection has to be with the portrayal of black people in the story. Brown and Flambeau encounter a black man working in a hotel whose manner is insolent to them. Flambeau makes the jawdropping observation, “Sometimes…I’m not surprised that they lynch them.”

Sure enough the threat comes from black members of a voodoo cult, and the story ends with the authorities having a crackdown on black people living in Britain. This is described with no apparent disapproval by Chesterton.

Most of the stories are not as awful as this one however, and Chesterton does a better job of ensuring that his worldview does not intrude into the stories as often as it did in The Innocence of Father Brown. Whatever their flaws, the stories are amusing and clever, and make a good read.

[Nikki in Niagara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reason for Reading: Next in the series.

This second collection of Fr. Brown lacks the appeal of the first collection. I enjoyed some stories, but found many to be disappointing in that they were short of being actual mysteries in the sense that I had expected them to be. Sometimes crimes were not really even committed and Fr. Brown was presented with more of a puzzle or conundrum to solve. When there is a crime the story will finish with Brown's solution and the police or any legal justice is hardly called to hand, something I'm finding difficult to get used to with these stories from both volumes so far. These stories are incredibly less religious in nature than the first volume though they all do carry a religious moral ethic as that is the nature of Fr. Brown's sleuthing methods. I was disappointed that Flambeau was rarely seen in this collection as I had come to consider him Brown's sidekick in the first volume but at least the narration has settled it's tone from the first and is written purely in the third person throughout these stories. An acceptable and entertaining read but nowhere near as good as "The Innocence of Father Brown". Chesterton, in real life, had still not converted to Catholicism at the point when these stories were published and I am interested to see if there will be any noticeable difference in the next volume which was published four years after his conversion.

1. The Absence of Mr. Glass - What a fantastic story to start this collection! Not a mystery though by any means, more of a puzzle, a conundrum. Fr. Brown goes to a detective to enlist his services to help determine whether a young man is suitable to marry a young woman known to him. Her mother is dead-set against the marriage as the suitor has a bit of mystery surrounding him, yet everyone else concerned is happy for the young lovers. As the party descends upon young Mr. Todhunter's rooms, they have need to break down the door upon which they find him bound and gagged in the corner. The detective then takes the disarray of the room into account and tells the nefarious doings of the young man and the mystery of one Mr. Glass. When he is finished Fr. Brown laughs and from the clues tells all the truth of what has happened and whether Mr. Todhunter is a suitable suitor or not. Very clever and a delight to read! 5/5

2. The Paradise of Thieves - I don't have a lot to say on this one. I've been busy and couldn't get my mind onto it; whether it was me or the story I can't say for sure. However, it wasn't terribly entertaining and I never had a great sense of what was going on or cared for that matter. It involved a kidnapping. 3/5

3. The Duel of Dr. Hirsch - Another story that didn't quite satisfy, very political. Early on reference is made to another case which I ignored but repeated mention of this case made me google it to see if it was a true crime and indeed it was happening about 20 years prior to the publishing of this book. Perhaps if one were up on these current events at the time the story would have been more enjoyable? However, it wasn't pertinent to the case presented here in its outcome and I was rather disappointed to have figured out the twist before the end. This story does at least bring Flambeau back into the picture. Hoping the next story will be better. 2.5/5

4. The Man in the Passage - Finally, a proper mystery! Fr. Brown is in fine form in this story. He arrives backstage at the Apollo Theatre where the star actress has called him to attend to her. There he finds her in the company of four others: two suitors, her leading man and her male servant. Miss Rome is obviously anxious to speak to Fr. and uses her charms to clear the room. As she sees one man out of the building she is heard walking down the passage to watch his progress down the street then a scream and kerfuffle is heard and the two suitors are heard exclaiming about seeing a man in the passage. Poor Miss Rome is found dead, the leading man is obviously arrested as the killer but it is upon the witness stand that Fr. Brown unravels the simple events of that evening proclaiming whom both the man in the passage and the killer each were. I liked that the killer received their just rewards in this case, even if it was in a round about way. (4/5)

5. The Mistake of the Machine - Well this is a funny tale involving, in a round about way, a wealthy man who holds obscurely themed parties each year. Starting off with a police detective telling Fr. Brown of a murder the previous evening of a warden after a prisoner escaped and his subsequent arrest of the culprit, a shabbily dressed man running across a nearby field. His guilt is all but proven to the detective by the use of his highly prized "psychometric" machine which measures the variations in one's pulse and thus can tell if a person is under stress and agitated during questioning. Fr. Brown is quite witty with his observations about the machine vs its operator and quite blows apart the detective's story. Though the detective has indeed caught a criminal it is not the one he thinks he has and Fr. Brown solves both the identity of the apprehended man and the true perpetrator of the prison escape and murder of the warden. A clever tale with an ending that surprised me. (4/5)

6. The Head of Caesar - Not quite a proper mystery in the ordinary sense but a crime and a puzzle that Fr. Brown wittily solves again. I really enjoyed this story and it is unique in it's telling. Flambeau is present at the beginning and end but doesn't play a major role. Most of the story takes place in a pub as a woman confesses her entire story to Fr. while the rest plays out at the scene of the crime where Brown wraps up the final pieces. A story of its time but good. (5/5)

7. The Purple Wig - Another fine puzzle mystery though no actual crime is committed again. This time it's more of a moral conundrum and this case takes on the British aristocracy and class system of the early 1900s. A journalist happens upon a table outside a pub finding three men, a doctor, a priest and an otherwise respectable gentleman other than his purplish wig. Here they converse and the topic turns to the old tales and curse of the Dukes of Exmoor. I won't say more but a twist in the middle turns into a double twist at the end for a fun story. Though again, not really a mystery. (4/5)

8. The Perishing of the Pendragons - The last few stories have been following a similar format and this one is no different. Brown and Flambeau are on a small holiday for Brown's health; he is suffering depression. They are taking a river cruise to the Pendragon estates and regaled with the family's legend which includes the mysterious burning tower. Brown just happens to have a hose in hand when the tower really starts to burn and the Father unravels the legend of yore and the current use of the legend. Again not exactly what I consider a mystery (ie no crime to solve) but Fr. does stop a crime from being committed and solve another puzzle. Not as entertaining as others but ok. Finally some good Brown/Flambeau interaction which is sorely lacking in this collection. (3/5)

9. The God of the Gongs - I'm the last person to judge a story based on modern society's views on certain elements such as race and sexism and always view a story from within the time period it was written. However, I could find no redeeming value in this story. To begin with it was a less than entertaining mystery and blatantly racist against the "negro" race. The n-word was used frequently and flippantly. I admit my disgust with the racism and rampant blatant derogatory references made me hurry and get this one over with; I really could not find that it was even trying to be positive within the constraints of the time it was written. In my opinion, this is a racist story even for the time period in which it was written. (0/5)

10. The Salad of Colonel Cray - Finally a genuine mystery and a fun one at that! A burglary takes place and only condiments seem to have been stolen. But when someone is poisoned it is Fr. Brown who happens to have the simple remedy to the rare poison just in the nick of time. (4/5)

11. The Strange Crime of John Boulnois - Rumours of a woman having an affair with a man abound and when he is stabbed and publicly found with his dying breath accuses the scorned husband John Boulnois the crime appears to be fait au complete. However, the priest on hand, Fr. Brown, takes one look around and knows all is not as it appears. Clever tale; the motives are old-fashionably unbelievable but nonetheless a good story. (4/5)

12. The Fairy Tale of Father Brown - For the final tale in this book it is nice to have Flambeau return. But once again this is not really a crime or a mystery as one expects. As in a previous story we are presented with a mysterious death from the past. Flambeau recounts the details as they were given him by one of the investigating detectives at the time. A prince had been found dead with a bullet in his head and yet there had been no shot fired and only a bullet mark found upon his cravat. After hearing the details of the strange tale, Fr. Brown is able to tell his version of what most likely happened; who the guilty party was and who it wasn't are quite interesting to say the least. A good story to end the volume. (4/5)

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

what an amazingly small-minded, mean-spirited, smug little man G.K. Chesterton is! I'm legitimately shocked by how bad these stories were. I had every anticipation of enjoying them totally and a little guiltily—I was very aware before I began that Chesterton is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative of the type that felt that World War I was a Jolly Good Idea etc, and what I primarily associate him with is "Lepanto", a poem I think about whenever I think about the power that mastery of rhythm and mastery of rhetorical devices have to create frisson in the body and make a heart beat in time on a word-by-word level, even when the feeling sparked on a sentence-level and story-level is moral and political revulsion. (that poem has an effect sort of like IT in a Wrinkle in Time, honestly. tetrameter is an amazing thing!) and Father Brown has been recommended by presses I trust and casually referred to as a good example of the genre by writers I trust, and frankly I didn't anticipate having any opinion besides "fun!" that would warrant reviewing the book.

but these were not fun. they were not very good as mysteries, and they were not very good as stories. I would like to talk about their failures as literature separately from Chesterton's politics, because my preference is always to get ahead of the facetious conservative opinion that "you all accept poorly made art as long as it agrees with your political views", but he has gone to great effort to make that impossible. his literary failures are his political failures because they are failures of his intellect. he is conservative because he is arrogant, paranoid, cynical, disrespectful, close-minded, and—the only really unforgivable sin in a mystery-story writer—he is incurious. there is not a story in this collection which does not hinge on the unbelievable actions of a person whose psychology is that of a liberal strawman. there is not a reveal in this collection which does not depend on a character whose two traits are "claims to be clever" and "has loudly said at some point 'I am an Atheist!'" (or "I am a journalist!" or "I am an American!" or "I call Catholics 'papists'!" or "I am fiscally liberal!", take your pick, they all have identical meanings) making an intellectual mistake so ridiculous that the only way to explain it is that holding any view out of step with Chesterton's makes you so wildly fucking stupid that you should not be allowed out alone.

it is the obligation of anyone who aims to love his fellow man, but particularly the obligation of the mystery writer, to think that everyone is in some way or another interesting. Chesterton thinks everyone is uninteresting, and he is delighted to use Father Brown to repeatedly point that out to them. unbelievably, relentlessly racist writing. I lost count of the quantity of times that we are meant to believe someone acts in such-a-way because of their racial makeup. I accept the twentieth-century conservative impulse to write character rather than psychology, and even half-agree with it (in literature rather than in life); Chesterton writes type of guy rather than character. bigotry, at the end of a long list of its worse sins, is so unforgivably boring.

I am also astonished that a man who wrote the sentence "The travellers looked at it with that paradoxical feeling we have when something reminds us of something, and yet we are certain it is something very different." should have the audacity to repeatedly use "he writes bad sentences" as an indication that a character should be despised.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as The Innocence of Father Brown. I liked The Salad of Colonel Cray.

[Gheeta · Rating 2 out of 5]

To be honest I was a little disappointed. I've heard so many good things about Chesterton's writings that I guess I just expected more. There is no unifying story line in this book, just a compilation of many tales where the inimitable Father Brown shows up and subsequently solves the problem. I guess I was expecting more character development...or simply something more.

[Anne White · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generally I like Chesterton, generally I like Father Brown; but this book seemed to lose steam as it went on. The first half was great, but the stories towards the end got a bit strange (and, in my edition, had a lot of asterisks "bleeping" unacceptable words).

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of twelve short stories about Father Brown, a priest who solves crimes. While dated, it was an enjoyable read of British detective stories. I read a downloaded ebook version.

[Lera · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started off liking these humorous crime tales, very accessible despite their antiquity. But the stories became less entertaining, the more of them that I read. As more horrific racial stereotypes (surely "of their time, but no more repulsive for that) were introduced, I found myself skipping whole pages in an effort to escape. Not the best sign. I'm fairly sure I've heard some of these serialised on the radio, and for me that's probably a better medium - idly listening to the better ones, whilst getting on with something else.

[Scilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a collection of twelve stories starring the priest, Father Brown and his friend Inspector Flambeau written in the first half of the twentieth century. Father Brown solves things by observation and thought, in some ways like Poirot, but in an unassuming and modest manner. The stories are each very different, but are very good reading.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was slightly disappointed. I found the Innocence of Father Brown exceedingly charming. Perhaps it was just me, but I found these stories of the Wisdom of Father Brown somewhat, bland? They were much less enthralling and I lost interest very quickly, whereas I couldn't put the Innocence down.

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ab und zu will Chesterton gelesen werden, und jedesmal bin ich unglücklich mit mir, dass mir das nicht besser gefällt. Irgendetwas stimmt mit mir nicht. Oder mit den Geschichten.

Der Gott des Gongs ist hervorzuheben, leider aus dem unrühmlichen Grund, dass die rassistisch ist. Mit dem Urteil sollte man vorsichtig sein, besonders, wenn es ich um Sachen handelt, die vor über hundert Jahren geschrieben wurden. Aber in diesem Fall muss man schon ein sehr großer Fan sein, wenn man die Augen schließen kann oder man hervorhebt (wie ich es in einem Kommentar las), dass Father Brown sich (und Chesterton) zumindest gegen Lynchjustiz ausspricht.

[Mariafrancesca di natura viperesca sta con gli ultimi della terra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Racconti noiosi. Quasi dimostrazioni di teoremi matematici di II media.

[Volodymyr Okarynskyi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Дуже незле, але химерність наростає. Можливо, тут менше "дедукції", але більше вигадливості і злочинця, і розслідувача, а також спостережень за психологією людини та суспільством. Наприклад, що деякі злочини легше приховати на людях ("Бог ґонґів"). Або цікаві спостереження про скнарність, зокрема між аристократами (чи псевдоаристократами). Актори, журналісти, вчені також часто зустрічаються. Є й колоніяльний шлейф з присмаком расизму. І ще трошки культів, навіть вуду. Все по класиці. Досить багато іронії, точніше сатири. Деякі з оповідок можна сприймати як притчу (про заздрість - "Дивний злочин Бовлнойза").
Деякі оповідання безумовні шедеври, особливо "Бузкова перука". І все ж видавцям цю збірку варто було б назвати дослівно, згідно з оригіналом "Мудрість отця/патера Бравна".
Коротше, Честертон і маленький "отець" Бравн круті (і навіть не нервує християнська тенденційність, бо тут вона ненав'язлива, панотець не моралізує, а радше вникає, і також п'є пиво і курить сигари). І хоч перша збірка, "Смиренність отця Брауна" (а в цій серії - "Хрест із сапфірами") - просто шедевральна, на 5+, то ця - також досконала, і менше 5 зірочок просто не ставиться.

[Roman Kurys · Rating 2 out of 5]

If anything, I am determined to figure out what people see in Father Brown stories.

This book was very different from the first one, that’s for sure. While the “Innocence of Father Brown” felt like a sort of version of Sherlock Holmes, these stories did not at all resemble Conan Doyle to me.

This, in itself, is not bad. I was excited to see the stories evolve into their own. They were just, for the most part, lackluster.

A random situations around which Father Brown is always present take place with sudden endings where Father Brown usually figures all of it out. Sometimes in the last paragraph of the story even.

The stories are also so over the top British, that sometimes I can’t figure out the little details of what is going on. I suppose that is only to be expected and is a “me problem”

I suppose that I may have to accept the fact that these stories just may not be for me. I’m missing some sort of connectivity between the stories, some sort of character development. This book did not give me that, so I’ll take a little break before attempting more Chesterton.

[Gabe Herrmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant mysteries, but kinda gets old (maybe our modern day attention span?!). Basically a bunch more short stories that are mysteries. Father brown is truly wise.

[The Celtic Rebel (Richard) · Rating 4 out of 5]

~ Entertaining ~ Easy-To-Read ~Great World Building ~ Wonderful Characters ~ Page-Turner ~ Original ~ Witty ~

A wonderful collection of mystery stories that are often amusing and clever. This collection wasn't on the same level as the first set of Father Brown mysteries but Chesterton's writing style and the wonderful characters keep it entertaining.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Page 66:
"I've been reading," said Flambeau, "of this new psychometric method they talk about so much, especially in America. You know what I mean; they put a pulsometer on a man's wrist and judge by how his heart goes at the pronunciation of certain words. What do you think of it?"
"I think it very interesting," replied Father Brown; "it reminds me of that interesting idea in the Dark Ages that blood would flow from a corpse if the murderer touched it."
"Do you really mean," demanded his friend, "that you think the two methods equally valuable?"
"I think them equally valueless," replied Brown. "Blood flows, fast or slow, in dead folk or living, for so many more million reasons than we can ever know. Blood will have to flow very funnily; blood will have to flow up the Matterhorn, before I will take it as a sign that I am to shed it."
"The method," remarked the other, "has been guaranteed by some of the greatest American men of science."
"What sentimentalists men of science are!" exclaimed Father Brown, "and how much more sentimental must American men of science be! Who but a Yankee would think of proving anything from heart-throbs? Why, they must be as sentimental as a man who thinks a woman is in love with him if she blushes. That's a test from the circulation of the blood, discovered by the immortal Harvey; and a jolly rotten test, too."

This book is not so good as The Innocence of Father Brown. Next book to be read will be The Man Who Was Thursday

The free e-book can be found at Project Gutenberg.

The free audi version can be also found at Project Gutenberg,

[Angus Mcfarlane · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chesterton has often been quoted, and he has a reputation as one of the most insightful Christian thinkers of his generation. As a result, I started reading 'orthodoxy' but found it hard to connect with it's vibe. Picking up a father Brown volume as a free ebook, I read it to see if I could get a softer introduction into GKs angle on things. Alas, I didn't really get father brown either. Maybe it worked for a previuos generation, but I found the depiction of father brown trite, whilst the stories seemed too contrived - was I supposed to sleuth them out for myself? I didn't find solutions in the text, as only fb had those. certainly the traditional detective approach,where the reader is gradually discovering the truth with the detective, is absent. Apparently, it is the fathers insight into human nature which solves the crime, but this was only apparent for me in the last of the stories. Perhaps another time....

[Ian White · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the most part excellent, particularly The Duel of Dr. Hirsch and The Strange Crime of John Boulnois. The God of Gongs, however, is quite hard to read due to its racism, which may well be typical of its time, but it still made me uncomfortable.

I enjoy the variety of tones, settings and styles Chesterton uses. He conjures up very vivid locales very quickly, and packs a lot in to 20 pages or so. They are hugely atmospheric and have a very odd, hard to describe tone. I also like the way Father Brown often enters each story some way in as a background figure who only comes to the fore towards the end of most of the stories.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this set of mysteries out loud to my son as part of his summer reading program. Wow! This was an exercise in vocabulary-building! Chesterton was an influential Christian intellectual who wrote on apologetics and philosophy, among other topics. His mystery stories are clever, but they are sometimes a bit hard to follow! Several mysteries end abruptly, and I found myself having to talk through the characters and the plot to discover what had actually happened, and who was guilty! Others, however, were easier to understand and quite entertaining.

[Cindy B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Wisdom of Father Brown" by G. K. Chesterton. Classic mysteries. Each chapter is a new story. Read by Frederick Brown ©1913 text / audio 1992 Re-readable. Highly recommended.

Free versions available at Librivox and Gutenberg. Christian-based mystery series.

[Bonnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The collection started off strong, but racism struck in "The Gong of Gods." It's real bad, friends. I strongly recommend the newer BBC show instead, as it deals with tough issues gracefully and with nuance.

[Bill Riggs · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second collection of Father Brown mysteries. These seem a bit lacking and disappointing compared to the first collection, but are still enjoyable and feature the eccentric cleric’s unique wisdom, wit and faith.

[Jane Cathleen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not his best work . I really did not enjoy this one .

[Sarah83 sbookshelf · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice collection, but not all stories are great

[Rebecca Adelle]

Audiobooks and I are not compatible. There shall be no further chance of relationship unless they contain more character and less verbosity than “The Wisdom of Father Brown.”

I listened to this audiobook three times. The first was on the plane to the states. I dozed frequently. The book finished, and I remembered fragments of details, but couldn’t piece them together in any semblance of a story. Not enjoying the feeling of bewilderment upon finishing a book, I determined to listen to it a second time — wherein I realized that each chapter is a separate story.

The third time through, I finally acquiesced that this is a book that I am not capable of following in audio form. It’s full of (probably delightful) long descriptions of humankind and their actions, and thoughts (probably) worth ruminating upon, but my visual brain can’t track the sentences long enough to appreciate them.

Maybe sometime I’ll read this book. I have a feeling I would enjoy it — if I could see it.

[Brenton · Rating 3 out of 5]

While there were some bright moments, it is a far cry from "The Innocence of Father Brown. I don't love written stories with casual racism, and if I hadn't read Chesterton's essays that resisted the progressive tendency towards racism in his culture, I would have simply put this down as not for me. Some of the language of this collection will be hurtful to some readers.