> Skip to content
  • Published: 3 April 2014
  • ISBN: 9780141393339
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook

Secret Of Father Brown



The fourth collection of Father Brown stories featuring the ingenious amateur detective. Ahead of a new series of the popular BBC adaptation starring Mark Williams, all five of Chesterton's original Father Brown books have been republished with charming and collectible Penguin covers.

'You see, I had murdered them all myself ... I had thought out exactly how a thing like that could be done, and in what style or state of mind a man could really do it. And when I was quite sure that I felt exactly like the murderer myself, of course I knew who he was.'

Unassuming super-sleuth Father Brown has such brilliant powers of deduction that he knows more about crime than the criminals themselves. In this fourth volume of stories, the shabby priest unravels the most baffling conundrums involving, among others, a flying fish, a man with two beards and the Worst Crime in the World.

G. K. Chesterton was born in 1874. He attended the Slade School of Art, where he appears to have suffered a nervous breakdown, before turning his hand to journalism. A prolific writer throughout his life, his best- known books include The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1922), The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) and the Father Brown stories. Chesterton converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922 and died in 1938.

'Chesterton knew how to make the most of a detective story' Jorge Luis Borges
%%%The fourth collection of Father Brown stories featuring the ingenious amateur detective. Ahead of a new series of the popular BBC adaptation starring Mark Williams, all five of Chesterton's original Father Brown books have been republished with charming and collectible Penguin covers.
'You see, I had murdered them all myself ... I had thought out exactly how a thing like that could be done, and in what style or state of mind a man could really do it. And when I was quite sure that I felt exactly like the murderer myself, of course I knew who he was.'
Unassuming super-sleuth Father Brown has such brilliant powers of deduction that he knows more about crime than the criminals themselves. In this fourth volume of stories, the shabby priest unravels the most baffling conundrums involving, among others, a flying fish, a man with two beards and the Worst Crime in the World.
G. K. Chesterton was born in 1874. He attended the Slade School of Art, where he appears to have suffered a nervous breakdown, before turning his hand to journalism. A prolific writer throughout his life, his best- known books include The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1922), The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) and the Father Brown stories. Chesterton converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922 and died in 1938.
'Chesterton knew how to make the most of a detective story' Jorge Luis Borges

  • Published: 3 April 2014
  • ISBN: 9780141393339
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook

About the author

G K Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874 - 1936) studied art at Slade School and literature at University College London before ending his studies early without qualifications. From 1900 he worked his way to become a freelance art and literary critic then a regular columnist and later a prolific writer (he has many essays, poems, short stories, novels and plays to his name).

Forty eight of the Father Brown short stories first appeared in various, now unknown, magazines and were later collected into five books: The Innocence of Father Brown, published in 1911; The Wisdom of Father Brown, published in 1914; The Incredulity of Father Brown, published in 1926; The Secrets of Father Brown, published in 1927; and The Scandal of Father Brown, published in 1935.

This edition also includes 'The Doddington Affair', the first half of which was published in Premier Magazines in 1914 with the challenge to G. K. Chesterton to finish and solve the mystery. He did so in the following issue. 'The Vampire of the Village', which also appears in this edition under The Scandal of Father Brown, was first published in 1936.

Also by G K Chesterton

See all