The Complete Father Brown Stories

Shabby and lumbering, with a face like a Norfolk dumpling, Father Brown makes for an improbable super-sleuth. But his innocence is the secret of his success: refusing the scientific method of detection, he adopts instead an approach of simple sympathy, interpreting each crime as a work of art, and each criminal as a man no worse than himself. This complete edition brings together all of the "Father Brown" stories, including two not previously available in Penguin: "The Donnington Affair", in which Chesterton rises to the challenge of solving a murder-mystery half written by someone else (Max Pemberton), and "The Mask of Midas", which was found in Chesterton's papers after his death.