Father Brown

Will Father Brown discover who killed the well-to-do ne'er-do-well? It appears as though he was stricken with the hammer of God. Is that a thing? G.K. Chesterton is most notable for his creation of Father Brown. This unlooked for, and often unwelcome, detective is actually not a detective. But rather, an individual self-trained to think as criminals think, for he has heard so many of their confessions. He knows how their minds work, and can piece together many things that others cannot. This story is from the first collection of Father Brown Stories, The Innocence of Father Brown.

Aristide Valentin, Paris chief of police, has decided to stage a grand dinner party at his estate. The estate has only one entrance with a garden is protected by a high wall; there is no entering or leaving, except by the main entrance which is guarded by Valentin's steadfast servant. However, a murder most foul, a decapitation occurs, and it will be up to Father Brown to use all his wits to solve this heinous murder.

If you were to meet a mild, hard-working little priest, named Father Brown, and were to ask him what he thought was the most singular luck of his life, he would probably reply that upon the whole his best stroke was at the Vernon Hotel, where he had averted a crime and, perhaps, saved a soul, merely by listening to a few footsteps in a passage.

"My last crime was a Christmas crime, a cheery, cosy, English middle-class crime; a crime of Charles Dickens. I did it in a good old middle-class house, a house with a crescent of carriage drive, a house with a stable by the side of it, a house with the name on the two outer gates, a house with a monkey tree. Enough, you know the species." How does Father Brown solve the theft of three gorgeous, large diamonds by a boastful thief?

Aristide Valentin, head of the Paris Police, is on the trail of the ingenious criminal and master of disguise, Flambeau. Valentin suspects that Flambeau is going to London steal precious religious articles. While traveling to London, Valentin overhears Father Brown tell a lady that he is carrying the "Blue Cross," a sterling silver cross covered in precious blue stones. Valentin warns Father Brown that it is dangerous to tell anyone that he is carrying an object of immense value. Valentin decides to tail Father Brown but loses him and there begins a desperate chase to avert a terrible crime.

In The Purple Wig, an investigative journalist, Frances Finn, sets out to discover the strange secret of the dukes of Exmoor and the legend of their mysterious hereditary deformed ear. When Finn meets the current duke, he is wearing a hideous purple wig, which apparently he never takes off in the presence of anybody. It would appear to be an ugly way of hiding his deformity...but Father Brown, who is visiting the duke at the time, is suspicious about the motives for wearing such a wig. As the investigation progresses, the story takes a highly unexpected turn.

The Perishing of the Pendragons" by G.K. Chesterton is a Father Brown story where Father Brown is invited on a boat trip around the Cornish coast, where he encounters a family called the Pendragons, who are plagued by a mysterious curse tied to a local legend about a Spanish prisoner and a treacherous coastline; Father Brown must unravel the complex web of family secrets and a planned crime to prevent the curse from seemingly coming true, using his keen observation skills and understanding of human nature to identify the culprit.