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Glossary and Character Taxonomy  Breakdown by Country of Origin   Bibliography   Table of Contents    The Best of the Encyclopedia

Brown, Father. Father Brown was created by G.K. Chesterton (Club of Queer Trades, Horne Fisher, Gabriel Gale, Mr. Pond) and appeared in numerous short stories and five collections of stories from 1910 to 1936, beginning with “Valentin Follows a Curious Trail” (The Saturday Evening Post, July 23, 1910).

Father Brown is a mild and unassuming priest who is a skilled and intuitive investigator. He has great success in solving crimes, legal and moral, and capturing or at least seeing to the punishing of the culprits. Brown works in the church of St. Francis Xavier in Camberwell and is assisted by the reformed Lupin Flambeau.

* I'm including Brown and his stories in the Best of the Encyclopedia category because of the undeniable skill with which they were written. Chesterton was a skilled writer who knew how to both entertain as well as expose his readers to deeper messages, and the Father Brown stories are fine examples of both. They are some of the best-written detective stories of the century. Regrettably, Chesterton was an antisemite and there are a couple of moments of raw antisemitism in the Father Brown stories, which is why I can never wholeheartedly embrace them or recommend them. The Father Brown stories are among the best of this encyclopedia but are among the most flawed as well. 

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