Penguin no. 1069: The Incredulity of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton

There was a brief period during which Father Brown enjoyed, or rather did not enjoy, something like fame. He was a nine days' wonder in the newspapers; he was even a common topic of controversy in the weekly reviews; his exploits were narrated eagerly and inaccurately in any number of clubs and drawing-rooms, especially in America. Incongrous and indeed incredible as it may seem to anyone who knew him, his adventures as a detective were even made the subject of short stories appearing in magazines.

Father Brown is a quiet and unassuming cleric. In each of the eight stories that make up this collection, we are reminded of the plainness of his appearance, with his shapeless, ill-fitting clothes, his shabby hat and his oversize umbrella. He seems an unremarkable and unobtrusive figure, as bland as his name, and in that sense he supplies a blank canvas onto which others initially project their ideas of what he is, and what he believes, while dismissing all they assume he stands for as anachronistic and mystical. Of course, they completely underestimate him; in the context of the stories this humble priest is consistently revealed as the wisest of them all.

Father Brown is an unusually passive detective, with little interest in seeking out clues, and often no interest in catching the perpetrator. His interest in solving crimes comes from his curiosity, and from "an intellectual hunger for the truth, even of trifles." He doesn't go out seeking crimes to solve, but comes across them in the course of his work as parish priest, and he solves them through contemplation, relying on intuition, and an innate understanding of sin and evil, rather than on deduction.

As the title hints, these stories largely concern what is and isn't believed, by Father Brown and the other characters, many of whom are sceptics and atheists. These progressive sceptics never doubt the superiority of their ideas, and yet it is suggested that they are blind to the assumptions and hypotheses upon which their philosophies are built. In solving the crimes, it is often not the criminals who are exposed, but what G.K. Chesterton clearly perceived as the unstable foundations of enlightened modern thought.

"It's part of something I've noticed more and more in the modern world, appearing in all sorts of newspaper rumours and conversational catchwords; something that's arbitrary without being authoritative. People readily swallow the untested claims of this, that or the other. It's drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it's coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition."

The stories all address this concern with superstition, but it is a term broadly defined, including not only those traditional superstitions centred around curses and Oriental mythology, but scientific ideas as well, such as inferences based on the study of genetics and psychology. Even the staples of detective fiction, routinely evoked to establish innocence or guilt, such as alibis and sealed rooms, are interpreted as superstitions.

Whether his concerns are valid or not (and as a Statistician I would be inclined to the view that some of them are), these are delightful and entertaining stories, and the insignificant Father Brown makes an engaging hero. Much of it is written tongue-in-cheek, and in places the stories are very amusing with some gentle mocking at the expense of radicals, revolutionaries and American millionaires, and even of Father Brown's opposite Sherlock Holmes, with the first short story The Resurrection of Father Brown referencing the unnatural return of Holmes after his fall from the cliff.