The Wisdom of Father Brown

Father Brown is back in The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914), the second of five collections of short stories featuring G. K. Chesterton’s unlikely, lovable priest-detective. Included are “The Paradise of Thieves” and “The Purple Wig,” which frequently rank among Chesterton’s top ten tales. Along with his sidekick, reformed criminal M. Hercule Flambeau, Father Brown employs his legendary intuition and insight into the criminal mind to unerringly solve even the most baffling of mysteries—among them the perplexing case of a man who was shot without firearms and the eerie tale of the Spaniard’s curse. Chesterton’s wildly popular Father Brown stories—which he continued to write until his death in 1936—are among the most beloved of the detective fiction genre.