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Holy Joe. Holy Joe was created by Vincent Harper and appeared in “A Cure of Sole” (The Saturday Evening Post, June 10, 1905) and “A Cycle of Cathay” (The Saturday Evening Post, Aug. 5, 1905).

The Reverend Joseph “Holy Joe” Aloysius McCann serves in New York City’s lower East Side. He is beloved by his constituency, but even more so by the men at police headquarters on Mulberry Street, for he does much to make their job easier. He has an insatiable curiosity, a deep knowledge of the underworld, and an “impish joy in pitting his own shrewdness against that of the past masters of the game.” Holy Joe knows all the dodges, is not fooled by ruses, and always gets his man, and once they are in jail tends to their souls as a priest should. (The similarities to Father Brown are surely coincidental).

* I'm including the Holy Joe stories in the Best of the Encyclopedia category because they are relatively well-written. I know nothing of Vincent Harper, and I certainly don't know why he only wrote two stories about Holy Joe, and I definitely don't believe that G.K. Chesterton ripped off Harper when creating Father Brown. What I do know is that the two stories are entertaining reading, that Harper's style works well with the subject matter and protagonist, and that Holy Joe himself is all the best parts of Father Brown without the smug bigotry. 

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