User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
The omnibus is the exhaustive collection of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown short stories. If you've got a taste for detective stories and clever, British tones, then you'll love it. The omnibus is huge and I've been working through it for about 8 months. Take it a story at a time with a cup of hot tea and low lighting!
Rating: really liked it
I feel kind of harsh giving this book 2 stars, since I really enjoyed the first five stories, which were the ones I was reading for university. In fact, I enjoyed them so much I decided to carry on reading this 700-odd page anthology, even though the required reading for the module was only the first 125pp or so. Taken on its own, Book 1, "The Innocence of Father Brown", would have easily earned an extra star or two from me. Book 2, "The Wisdom of Father Brown", was still fun to read, but I found the stories were starting to feel either slightly repetitive, as Chesterton resorted to similar plots as those he used in the first collection, or confusing and unsatisfying in their resolutions. I only made it halfway through the second story in Book 3, "The Incredulity of Father Brown", before giving up - I just wasn't being drawn in by the premise any more, especially as Father Brown was by now inexplicably transplanted from his quaint English parish to a globe-trotting career as spiritual adviser to the rich and famous in the Americas. (Seriously, did I miss something there?). Usually I'm loath to give up on a book, but this downturn occurred just shy of the collection's halfway mark, and I decided that on this occasion it was simply an unjustified investment of my time to hang on to the end, 400 or so pages away, just to see if things improved.
Not that I'm accusing Chesterton of being a bad writer; he's funny and his characters are engaging in ways that make up for the odd unbelievable moment or plot hole, the sort that are to be found in any long-running detective series. But, as the introduction to the volume informed me when I turned to it for answers, the author was writing from Book 3 onwards under some duress. Like Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, Chesterton had grown tired of his signature creation and wanted to retire him; as with Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, public demand for more Father Brown stories eventually wore down the author's resistance; but unlike Conan Doyle and Christie, Chesterton does not, to my mind, succeed in hiding his boredom with the series. The situations become more outlandish as if to make up for the fact that the endearing heart of the original few stories has gone. And for me, it just didn't work.
I think that perhaps I'd have had more patience with this series if I'd been reading the five or six original collections separately, rather than in one complete volume. I love Agatha Christie, particularly the Hercule Poirot series, but I think I'd get bored reading all the Poirot stories back-to-back in a single collection, too; this style of presentation does serve to highlight some of the repetitions and escalations that are present in most long-running detective series, but that aren't particularly obvious or bothersome if you read them with a decent gap in-between. I hope to come back to my copy of the Complete Father Brown some day, with fresh eyes and a few other books to read alongside it, to break it up into stand-alone short stories as they were originally intended to be read. In the meantime, I'd recommend anyone who loves detective fiction to go out and find a copy of "The Innocence of Father Brown", but to consider reading it and judging it by itself and on its own merits, rather than using this collection as an introduction to the character and the series.
Rating: really liked it
Oh my...how much do I love Father Brown? I don't have a crush on him like I do on Lord Peter Wimsey, but he's so wise and compassionate and unassuming that I wish he was my priest. Not that I have a priest, or would really know what to do if I did. But that's how much I like him.
Rating: really liked it
I so enjoy dipping into these time and again. One brief story before I have to cook supper; one story before bed. A story read out loud to change the mood of intractable children; one story to remind me again of the forgotten joy of being human.
Sometimes I read reviews of older literature and someone is often angsting about the book offending entire classes of people. I find I would rather read an old book that assumes women are weak than a new book that assumes they must be sexually aggressive in explicit ways. And if I fall into a category that is supposedly offended, why just let me alone to deal with the offense on my own, or accept that I find no offense whatsoever!
The Father Brown mysteries do get strecthed thin at times. There are just too many of them not to! At the same time, they are well done, many are nearly perfect in timing, mood, and reasoning. The characters are interesting. The religious melding of thinking and feeling is SUCH a breath of fresh air in our day of artificial boundaries between science and faith, or thinking and feeling. Those boundaries are stupid. They are like the man looking at himself in the mirror and deciding that his head is more important than his heart, or that his brain is the only thing in his head that thinks. Anyway, Father Brown makes for wonderful mystery stories, fantastic doses of irony, finely chiselled humor, and all well supprtive of Christianity, true reasoning, absolute truth, and decent humanity.
I am so glad I discovered these.
Our paper copy has suffered in its loyal service to our reading needs in the family. I am pleased to say that we now have digital copies on the kindle.
I've come back to add a little detail because I am working my way through the series again. Resurrection of Father Brown continues to be my favorite, or next to fave including The Blue Cross. The God of the Gong actually horrified me more than last time with the nasty comments about lynching and so on.
These stories run the gamut. Some almost make no sense whatsoever. Others shine like jewels on display in a museum.
Rating: really liked it
Snap, crackle, pop! A crime, a cast of suspects and a solution. All within about twenty pages although the “pop” often lands just behind your ear with a subtle, soft blow because Father Brown is such a sly little devil.
These clever mysteries are not three-course meals. They are cheese nibbles for the quick-thinking reader, not mystery banquets for the gullible with more time on their hands than brains.
Like Stilton, Gorgonzola, Camembert, Cheddar, Brie, Munster or Gouda, on their own or with a nano-ploop of honey or a smidge of fig jam to heighten their sultry allure, these delicious snacks must be savored one-at-a-time, not more than once a day. So take your time. Hide your cheese!
G.K. Chesterton was one of the greatest twentieth century essayists with a diabolical sense of humor. Fiction was but a sideline.
“The poets,” he once observed, “have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”
Neither Chesterton, Father Brown nor this writer have ever been able to solve that peculiar mystery.
Rating: really liked it
Father Brown is to psychology what Sherlock Holmes is to material evidence. Re-reading these last Fall, I found that the chief pleasure and merit of the Father Brown mystery stories is getting inside the mind of Chesterton himself. The stories themselves are uneven in worth -- I got the impression that Chesterton churned them out, occasionally pausing over insurmountable implausibilities and plot defects but then just moving on with a shrug. Even so, they are fully as clever as any television detective episode I've seen and the nuggets of psychological wisdom are delightful.
Rating: really liked it
Father Brown is simply one of the best characters ever created--a blend of brilliance, joy, and simplicity. The stories are engaging, the endings are believable, sometimes even solvable, but never obviously predictable or boring. With five volumes, there are inevitably certain similarities in some stories, but Chesterton finds a way to make each story unique. The first two volumes ( The Innocence and Wisdom of Father Brown) are the best, but some excellent stories are sprinkled throughout the other three volumes, and I didn't think any story disappointed. Fans of Chesterton or fans of mysteries of this era (Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, or slightly earlier Doyle's Sherlock Holmes) will love Father Brown.
Rating: really liked it
I remember really enjoying these when I was a pre-teen (and also feeling like my brain exploded every single story); should definitely come back to the collection sometime.
Rating: really liked it
I notice that it has taken me two months exactly to read this omnibus of all the Father Brown stories. Father Brown is unlike any other detective in fiction. His approach to solving crime - usually murders - is to imagine himself as the murderer:
’I had planned out each of the crimes very carefully,’ went on Father Brown, ‘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.’
********
’And when you spoke merely in defence of your friend – no, sir, I can’t imagine any gentleman double-crossing another under such circumstances; it would be a damned sight better to be a dirty informer and sell men’s blood for money. But in a case like this —! Could you conceive any man being such a Judas?’
‘I could try.’ said Father Brown.
It is quite obvious from his writing that Chesterton was a brilliant man. He is sometimes difficult to follow - impossible, in fact, for a casual reader. The reader must read carefully to understand his meanings. But his writing is not only cerebral, but beautifully descriptive and poetic, if sometimes a bit dark or gruesome, but always his descriptions set an atmosphere.
It was one of those rare atmospheres in which a smoked-glass slide seems to have been slid away from between us and Nature; so that even dark colours on that day look more gorgeous than bright colours on the cloudier days.
*******
. . . the blood was crawling out from under his fallen face like a pattern of scarlet snakes that glittered evilly in that unnatural subterranean light.
*******
. . . the tree-tops in front of them stood up like pale green flames against a sky steadily blackening with storm, through every shade of purple and violet. The same light struck strips of the lawn and garden beds; and whatever it illuminated seemed more mysteriously sombre and secret for the light. The garden bed was dotted with tulips that looked like drops of dark blood, and some of which one might have sworn were truly black;. . .
It is not a surprise that Chesterton’s writings as saturated, as it were, with his religious beliefs - doubly so since his hero is a Roman Catholic priest. Father Brown’s character is complex and sometimes seems to hold contradictory views. He upholds traditional values, and so would be today classified Conservative. And yet he is very much on the side of the so-called “common people;” the workers, the poor, the rag-dressed beggars. Most would today call that a Liberal view. And yet in Chesterton’s Christianity, that is the orthodox view; it follows the teachings of Christ.
I deliberately read this slowly; I allowed myself two or three stories per day, and I think this is the most effective and beneficial way of reading it. I didn’t read from it every day, and thus I didn’t tire of so many stories back to back.
One final note: this book was published in 1899, and it contains many slang words relating to ethnicities that are considered offensive and taboo today. There are points at which Father Brown’s character makes statements that a modern reader will interpret as racist. I tried not to judge this book - published over 100 years ago - by my modern sensibilities. If you have less tolerance for this sort of thing, you might want to skip it. Honestly, there was one story that was so bad that I skimmed over it. (The God of the Gongs in “The Wisdom of Father Brown” had virtually no redeeming features.)
That is why I gave this 4 stars instead of 5; because while I try not to judge older writings for this aspect, still, it lessens my enjoyment.
Rating: really liked it
Wow. I picked up this book because I was enjoy mysteries that are neither cozy nor thrillers, so I find that older mysteries are more to my taste. However, I didn't really enjoy these at all. While I thought some of the solutions were problematic, as in "The Invisible Man", and I was put off by the fact that people kept getting killed right under Father Brown's nose, my main problem was with the tone of the stories. A short, incomplete list of people who might be offended by these stories include: women, Jews, black people, Asians, Protestants, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, pagans, Italians, Americans, union members, actors, Communists, intellectuals, Celts, Scottish people...basically, if you are not a white male English Catholic, you might want to be prepared for something insulting to be said about you at some point. I realize that these stories were written before WWII, but jeez.
On the plus side, these are blessedly short, tightly written stories that won't take up too much of your time. They're so easy to read that I finished the whole book, despite several headdesk moments. I also like the character of Father Brown, a kindly priest who understands the criminal mind because his religion's emphasis on the sinful nature of all mankind. Chesterton is very imaginative author, and some bits are quite funny. I liked the emphasis on redeeming the criminals in these cases--in so many mysteries, it's just toss them in the poky and be done with it. So, you might enjoy these if you can look past the outdated stereotypes.
Rating: really liked it
Father Brown is one of my favourite fictional detectives because G. K. Chesterton embodied him with a wonderful sense of time and place. The strength of Chesterton's Father Brown stories lie in their diversity (brilliant, contemplative and bizarre - sometimes all at once) consistent cleverness and wide range of themes (far more depth then I usually expect from mysteries). 'The Complete Father Brown' is a volume packed with so much top-notch quality material that one read really only captures the surface. I now understand completely why Chesterton's Father Brown was so transformative for the mystery genre (especially when other authors like Agatha Christie seem superficial by comparison).
Rating: really liked it
Got myself re acquainted with these old classics. They are witty, wordy, beautifully written examples of golden age mysteries. One loves them, fondly remembers them, then goes for something completely different since these mysteries were absolutely improbable. I could almost hear Raymond Chandler gnashing his teeth as I read and enjoyed 'The Worst Crime in the World'.
Recommended for pleasant reading. Take your time. Know that whatever you are reading are fantastic and not to be taken too seriously. Then and only then you might extract maximum pleasure from them.
Rating: really liked it
Review for THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN
read 1/06/19 - 1/13/19
4.5:5 stars
How do I review a book that is so thoroughly EPIC?!
Think Sherlock Holmes as a little, round priest, and you have Father Brown. That isn't to say that the Father Brown stories and the Sherlock Holmes stories are nearly identical. G. K. Chesterton and Arthur C. Doyle are two very different writers, and their mystery writing is the first place which proves that.
I've discovered that in the Father Brown stories you often come upon startlingly insightful one-liners. G. K. Chesterton is also a master at creating that deliciously creepy atmosphere perfect for a good mystery (think THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, Poe, and Hitchcock).
Best short quotes:
"The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen."
"The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic."
"Every clever crime is founded ultimately on some one quite simple fact --- some fact that is not in itself mysterious. The mystification comes in covering it up, in leading men's thoughts away from it."
"Have you ever noticed this --- that people never answer what you say? They answer what you mean --- or what they think you mean."
"You are my own only friend in the world, and I want to talk to you. Or, perhaps, be silent with you."
"We have taken a wrong turning, and come to a wrong place. . . . Never mind; one can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place."
"Cheerfulness without humor is a very trying thing."
Never mind the long quotes. Read this book to unearth them on your own!
I won't go on to reading THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN immediately because too many short stories all in a row are the perfect way to ruin my appreciation of a certain author. Even so, I look forward to reading more of G. K. Chesterton's amazing imaginations!
~~~
Read The Wisdom of Father Brown 6/30/19-12/31/19
4 stars
Rating: really liked it
I'm a little sad that I've finished it, since it was the complete Father Brown. The last time I went to read it I hated it; I found it priggish, and overly concerned with darkness. But now, I guess, it reads to me like someone who might feel the world has forgotten what sin is; has forgotten what the snarls of the human soul can be like and get to, in the worst of times. Have we really forgotten so well?
I don't like to think of sin, but Father Brown makes me think of it in the most prosaic way, as though it were simply a matter of being straight and good, or not. He makes me want to be good. Truly. And I think, that's the best kind of effect a book can have.
One wonders, did Chesterton conduct the 'spiritual exercise' he has his little priest follow, of delving so completely into the heart of every human twist as to see it in himself, and forgive, and realize how near he was to it?
One wonders if Chesterton were as uncommonly good as this little priest is, with his simplicity, and his rationality, and his kindness.
Rating: really liked it
Father Brown, the diminutive, sharp-witted, pious clergyman and a part-time detective, is rather a fun character by Chesterton. Comprising of all stories written by him starring Brown and the gentleman thief turned faithful companion Hercule Flambeau clearly modelled after Lupin, is a veritable read around the holidays. This along with the audio dramatization by BBC and the long-running ITV series starring Mark Williams form a complete package of sorts for lovers of whodunits and whimsical characters!
Definitely goes to my yearly re-read list along with Christie and MR James.
My rating - 5/5
