While on a lecture tour of England in 1904, Chesterton met one of the most important people in his life: Father John O\u2019Connor, a Catholic priest who became a lifelong friend and inspiration. It was Father O\u2019Connor who opened Chesterton\u2019s eyes to the Catholic Faith in a way he had never considered and patiently accompanied on the spiritual pilgrimage that would follow. But he also became the basis for Chesterton\u2019s greatest fictional character, and one of the greatest characters in all of detective fiction: Father Brown.<\/p>\n
It all started with a friendly conversation about an article Chesterton was proposing to write about \u201csome rather sordid social questions of vice and crime.\u201d Father O\u2019Connor politely suggested that Chesterton was going in the wrong direction with his conclusion, and to demonstrate his point, the priest revealed \u201ccertain facts he knew about certain perverted practices\u201d that jolted Chesterton, who \u201chad not imagined that the world could hold such horrors.\u201d Later in the day Chesterton and Father O\u2019Connor were talking to some Cambridge undergraduates and got involved in a very deep and lively discussion about philosophy. After Father O\u2019Connor excused himself, the two college students expressed their admiration for the priest\u2019s keen intellect but ultimately dismissed him as no doubt being insulated and na\u00efve about the real world. Chesterton says he almost laughed out loud, for it was the priest who knew more about real evil and the real world than the two Cambridge men, who in comparison knew about as much as \u201ctwo babies in the same perambulator.\u201d<\/p>\n
The incident served as the initial inspiration for a series of mysteries featuring a priest-sleuth whose strength was twofold. One, he could solve crimes because he could get inside not only the criminal mind but the criminal heart. Two, the criminals (and everybody else) would not suspect him to suspect them because he seemed so common and na\u00efve. His two-fold strength, in other words, was wisdom and innocence.<\/p>\n
Chesterton\u2019s first collection of Father Brown stories, The Innocence of Father Brown<\/em>, appeared in 1911 (all had previously been published in the United States in The Saturday Evening Post<\/em>). Ellery Queen called it \u201cthe miracle book of 1911.\u201d Chesterton had done something revolutionary in detective fiction, which at that time was dominated not only by Sherlock Holmes, but by a myriad of poor imitations trying to outdo one another with ever more baffling crimes and convoluted puzzles. Chesterton favored the cozy mystery, the domestic murder, with a millionaire usually performing the important service of being the murder victim and the scope of the investigation narrowed to limited time, limited space, and a limited number of suspects, with all the clues revealed to the reader as well as to the detective. As a fan of detective fiction himself, he knew that the reader enjoyed being fooled, but being fooled fairly. Not only did he help establish the rules of fair play in the genre, but his emphasis on motive and character freed detective fiction from the copycat techniques of the rivals of Sherlock Holmes. The leading mystery writers of his day quickly embraced this new style of murder mystery. They began writing stories of domestic crimes with human motives, with a limited list of suspects, with obvious (though well-disguised) clues, and with an unlikely detective who solves his puzzles without relying on superhuman knowledge or intelligence. Indeed, whenever you think of the great detectives of mystery fiction’s golden age-Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey, Miss Marple, Ellery Queen, Philo Vance, or Nero Wolfe-remember their parentage. Remember that they had a father. His name was Father Brown.<\/p>\n And there is another famous detective who was clearly inspired by Father Brown. Like Father Brown, he was slightly comical and improbable, unassuming, unthreatening, never taken seriously by the guilty party, but always knowing much more than he let on. I\u2019m speaking of course, of TV\u2019s Columbo<\/em>.<\/p>\n The first Father Brown story remains one of the most famous and most reprinted: The Blue Cross<\/em>. In it, a master criminal, the great Flambeau, pretends to be a priest and tries to steal a valuable cross. Father Brown exposes Flambeau as a fraud when the false priest attacks reason. A real priest, says Father Brown, would defend reason because \u201cAlone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason.\u201d Apparently this idea was too shocking for Hollywood. In the film version, starring Alec Guinness as Father Brown and Peter Finch as Flambeau, the fake priest gives himself away by ordering a ham sandwich on Friday.<\/p>\n In one of the most interesting twists in all of detective fiction, Flambeau goes from the role of archenemy in the first few stories to becoming a detective himself and serving as Father Brown\u2019s sidekick in the later stories. Perhaps it was a foreshadowing of the author\u2019s relationship with the real priest. It was long after Flambeau and Father Brown joined forces, after almost half the Father Brown stories were written, that Chesterton officially joined forces with the Real Father Brown. It was in 1922 that the Father John O\u2019Connor received G.K. Chesterton into the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The First Collection of Father Brown Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[1104,101,1084],"class_list":["post-1929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chesterton-101","tag-detective","tag-father-brown","tag-mysteries"],"yoast_head":"\n