PUBLIC DOMAIN!

(1911) The Innocence of Father Brown vol. 1

THE BLUE CROSS
‘A perfect dome of peacock-green sank into gold amid the blackening trees and the dark violet distances. The glowing green tint was just deep enough to pick out in points of crystal one or two stars. All that was left of the daylight lay in a golden glitter across the edge of Hampstead…’
In this, the first Father Brown story, Hampstead Heath on a stormy day is transformed by Chesterton’s brilliant and lurid description of the sky, creating a surreal background to this tale of pursuit. Chesterton had studied art at the Slade School of Art before turning to writing, and his vivid and detailed descriptions of the landscape in these stories shows his keen artistic eye.
This story is unique among the Father Brown mysteries in that it does not follow the actions of the priest himself, who is here the pursued, but rather those of the French detective Valentin, the pursuer.

THE SECRET GARDEN
At a party, a decapitated body is found in a sealed garden – where is the murderer? A cleverly constructed crime that verges on being a perfect work of art and in which the medium is blood, this is a tale in the French grand guignol tradition, set in Paris, with echoes of Edgar Allan Poe.

THE QUEER FEET
The Club of the Twelve True Fishermen in this story would not have been remarkable in its eccentricity in the London of the early 1900s when clubs like The Travellers – the qualification for membership of which stipulated that members must have traveled out of the British Isles to a distance of at least 500 miles from London in a straight line – really did exist. Chesterton was a clubbable man and a founder member of The Detective Club in 1929. In his novel The Club of Queer Trades, prospective members are required to devise a completely new means of earning a living for themselves.
In this story the club’s ceremonial fish knives and forks are inexplicably stolen from under the very noses of its members. Father Brown averts a crime and perhaps saves a soul merely by listening to a few footsteps in a passage.

THE FLYING STARS
This story is set in a prosaic family house in Putney at Christmas, when the theft of valuable jewels takes place whilst an elaborate charade or game of hide and seek is acted out. A Christmas conundrum for Father Brown, in which Chesterton has fun depicting the left-wing John Crook as a socialist (in ‘an aggressive red tie’). ‘A socialist,’ says Crook, ‘means a man who wants all the chimneys swept and all the chimney sweeps paid for it.’ ‘But who won’t allow you,’ put in the priest in a low voice, ‘to own your own soot.’ Chesterton had himself flirted with socialism as a young man, befriending George Bernard Shaw. He later changed his mind on this issue, but kept Shaw’s friendship for life; indeed, Shaw went so far as to describe Chesterton as a ‘colossal genius’.

THE INVISIBLE MAN
The mundane North London suburb of Camden Town in winter is enlivened by the murder of an inventor by a seemingly invisible man. The body is found surrounded by the inventor’s grotesque robot figures – were they involved in some way in the killing? This story shows Flambeau in his first outing as a reformed man, ironically plying the profession of detective. The mild and insignificant Father Brown is on hand to help him.

THE HONOUR OF ISRAEL GOW
Set in the wilds of Scotland, at gothic Glengyle Castle, this is a story that could be based on an old party-trick: how to link together a group of disconnected objects. In this instance they include snuff, steel springs, microscopic metal wheels, loose precious stones, and candles without any holders. ‘Ten false philosophies will fit the universe; ten false theories will fit Glengyle Castle,’ says Father Brown at the beginning of this ‘investigation without a crime’!
By G.K. Chesterton; read by David Timson