Father Brown stories

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#1

I was just curious if anyone had ever read any Father Brown mystery stories. I’m a big G.K. Chesterton fan, but I find these to be really inferior mystery stories. Don’t get me wrong - G.K. Chesterton is incapable of writing anything that isn’t entertaining. Still, as mystery stories, these fail, generally because G.K. Chesterton withholds some vital piece of information that ties everything all together until the last page, or just plain cheats.

A good example is a story in which a man is found murdered in his bedroom. There is only one entrance to the building, and six people located all along the path all swear that they didn’t see anyone. So what’s the solution? Well, Father Brown points out that “no one ever sees mail men” and the police go out and arrest the mail man, who of course is the killer. This sort of resolution happens constantly.

The problem with the stories seems to be in the actual nature of Father Brown as a detective. Brown is supposed to be intuitive about human nature, not necessarily deductive of facts. Unfortunately, intuition is rarely satisfying in mystery stories, where the delight of the reader is following the same thought processes as the detective. After you’re done with a story, you feel a pride in yourself because, since the detective was able to logically put all the pieces together and you were able to understand the chain, the reader feels certain that in a similar situation, they could do the same. A good mystery story is as exhilirating from pride as it is from crime and intrigue. Father Brown stories have none of this - G.K. Chesterton uses the same crazy-man logic scheme to solve his mysteries that inspired the programmers of The Longest Journey to utilize an inflatable duck in withdrawing a key from a subway track.

Furthermore, even as a somewhat-religious individual myself who, either way, has a hell of a lot of respect for organized religion - Father Brown’s religious tirades are tedious and grating to the extreme. Some examples:

“Stand still”, he said in a hacking whisper, "I don’t want to threaten you, but - "

“I do want to threaten you,” said Father Brown, in a voice like a rolling drum. “I want to threaten you with the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched.”

“You see,” said |Father Brown in a low but easy tone, “Scotpeople before Scotland existed were a curious lot. In fact, they’re a curious lot still. But in the prehistoric times I fancy they really worshipped demons. That,” he added genially, “is why they jumped at the Puritan theology.”

Absolutely maddening.

As stories, they are quirky and fun to read, but as mystery stories, they stink. That said, I can’t understand for the life of me why mystery afficionados harp on the brilliance of them so vehemently. Any insight?

#2

I’m not a huge Chesterson fan, although I really like THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY. It might help if you think of the Father Brown stories more along the lines of, I don’t know, C.S. Lewis’s Narnia. Chesterson was a deeply religious man, and the Brown stories are an attempt to elucidate some of his ideas/feelings about faith through a popular genre.

So, you’re looking for the wrong thing here. The Brown stories are not supposed to be exercises in logic, they’re supposed to be revelatory flashes of the reality of the human condition.

A good example is a story in which a man is found murdered in his bedroom. There is only one entrance to the building, and six people located all along the path all swear that they didn’t see anyone. So what’s the solution? Well, Father Brown points out that “no one ever sees mail men” and the police go out and arrest the mail man, who of course is the killer. This sort of resolution happens constantly.

Perfect example – although this particular gimmick has been incorporated upteen million times in “straight” mysteries. The point of the story isn’t “we should interview everybody at the scene of the crime”, the point of the story is something like “in modern society, there are hordes of people who we see only as things, machines who provide a function”.

Or how about “The Hammer of God”, the most famous Brown story, where the murder is commited by somebody who…SPOILER…

throws a hammer off of a high place. The point of the story isn’t “you could actually commit murder this way”, the point of the story is something like “pride goeth before a fall”.

I don’t think Chesterson is a particularly influential writer nowadays, although you could make the case that the more psychological school of British mysteries (Ruth Rendell, etc.) is an outgrowth of this sort of tendency.

junior allen

#3

I like your comparison with Narnia here, and I think your summary of Chesterton’s motives for writing the Father Brown series is quite well-put, though I can’t really agree with all of it. I am a huge Chesterton fan and actually own about half of the 30 volume series of his complete writings, and he was a huge mystery-story fanatic. He himself seems to have viewed them as primarily mystery stories, albeit with a Catholic twist. Since he seems to have loved mystery stories so much, it seems odd to watch him flagrantly flount the conventions and structure that gave him so much pleasure. I suppose there’s an argument for innovation, here, except that the structure of the Father Brown stories (for the most part - there are a couple of gems in there) seems to me to be more of haphazard plotting than anything else. After all, Chesterton could (and does, in too-few of the Brown stories) expound on his Catholic/fairyland philosophy, and on the nature of man, while still writing fair mysteries. Most of the time, though, he just cheats, such as introducing invisible mail-men at the last minute, or, even worse, have Father Brown with-hold some vital information that he alone possesses until the end of the story.

Either way, I don’t mean to express contempt, since Chesterton is such an entertaining writer. I’ve been enjoying The Innocence of Father Brown (I read The Wisdom of Father Brown a year back or so) greatly, despite these problems, because he is such a brilliant literary talent and his style so absolutely charming and boy-ish. But I can’t for the life of me see what traditional mystery fans see in these stories, since as mysteries, they are deplorably plotted without a hint of rhyme or reason.

Perfect example – although this particular gimmick has been incorporated upteen million times in “straight” mysteries. The point of the story isn’t “we should interview everybody at the scene of the crime”, the point of the story is something like “in modern society, there are hordes of people who we see only as things, machines who provide a function”.

Yes, I’ll agree with all that, but that doesn’t make it plausible that six individuals, when confronted with a murder, all forgot that a mail man was the only person who’d been around. And, after all, aren’t mystery stories really just literary exercises in the dissection and reconstruction of the plausible?

Anyway, great thoughts, Junior, so thanks. The Man Who Was Thursday is a work of genius and I don’t really think anything else he wrote really compares. Still, I’d recommend “The Ball and the Cross” as another one of his great novels, as an Atheist and a Catholic wander around England over the course of two hundred pages, aiming to fight a duel over philosophies. I like it because it is intensely surreal, very funny, and has God locked up in an insane asylum at the end.

#4

I’ve never been a big mystery fan. I tend to go more for the suspense books that have a mystery at the core but which really aren’t whodunits. Stuff like Elmore Leonard. I’ve been meaning to read some Ross and John D. McDonald though.

#5

Hard boiled. That’s the way. Ross and John have very different characters. But both are great writers. If you like Ross though, I would highly recommend Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. The two of them and Ross McDonald make up the “Big Three” of hard boiled fiction.

#6

One of the best mailing lists devoted to books is devoted to hardboiled fiction, rara-avis. Some pretty hardcore fans post there regularly, as well as some writers/editors. George Pelecanos posted there for awhile last year.

I occasionally post there, under my real name.

You can check out the archives at www.miskatonic.org and see if it’s for you.

junior allen

#7

To that list I would add Jim Thompson - I’d actually put him above McDonald. But I’d also argue that it’s definitely Hamett and Chandler w-a-a-y ahead, then the rest of the pack led by the likes of Thompson and McDonald.

For a recent writer working in the genre and avoiding parody, I’d recommend Joe Gores, especially the PI agency series (Dan Kearney Associates [DKA], IIRC).

Nick

#8

Hardboiled fiction is a subject near and dear to my heart. I read a great deal of it.

This might serve as a good introduction, although there’s a lot of great stuff out there:

Hammett – RED HARVEST, MALTESE FALCON, GLASS KEY

Chandler – BIG SLEEP; FAREWELL, MY LOVELY; LITTLE SISTER, LONG GOODBYE

James M. Cain – POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE

Mickey Spillane (don’t knock him if you’ve never read him) – I, THE JURY; VENGEANCE IS MINE; MY GUN IS QUICK

Chester Himes – A RAGE IN HARLEM, THE REAL COOL KILLERS

Horace McCoy – THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY?

Jim Thompson – THE KILLER INSIDE ME, POP. 1280, THE GETAWAY

David Goodis – STREET OF NO RETURN, DOWN THERE

Charles Willeford – PICK-UP, COCKFIGHTER, MIAMI BLUES

I could go on and on, but that’s a start.

junior allen