michaelmay 's review for:

The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton

2.0

---

I haven't finished The Innocence of Father Brown and I'm still processing what I've read of it. As a collection of mystery short stories, I wasn't enjoying it. The solutions were too pat; too cute. Father Brown effortlessly sees what others miss, which is never a clue, but simply an insight about human nature that allows him to understand what's truly going on. Frankly, the quaintness of the solutions remind me of that other Brown detective, Encyclopedia. Father Brown wasn't working for me as a character, either. Chesterton never tells me anything real about the clergyman. The character is astute, but he's a cipher.

Brown's insights are the point though and I want to come back later - after letting the book sit a while - to try again with that in mind. "The Invisible Man" is a great example. It's set up as a locked-room mystery, but the revelation is that the room was never locked at all. It was just entered by someone that the other characters were ignoring. The profundity of the story is that there are people all around us whom we ignore, but who nevertheless are human beings with thoughts and feelings and wills. It's an important reminder and it makes me curious about what other insights Chesterton explores in these stories. I just need to change the way I approach them.