Father Brown: Selected Stories by GK Chesterton (2003)

This compilation is my first exposure to Chesterton, and has been an eye-opener. A relative was very disappointed with him, and I was influenced by that not to expect a great deal. I have to say I have a very different reaction. The most distinctive thing about these stories is their extraordinary colour - they have, like the weather in the last story in this group, The Insoluble Problem, a vibrancy and atmosphere that is almost prodigious. That story involves the odd intensity of colour that exists in storm conditions, and somehow this is what Chesterton achieves, time and time again. The word lurid keeps coming to mind, but it would need to be stripped of its shabby connotation. Iridescent, perhaps? These stories, in terms of literary history, are the connection between Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie, with all the standard plots adhered to, and the evasions and coincidences too. But I think there is an extra dimension here; he plays poetically with implications, and draws long inferences out metaphorically in a really enjoyable way. This is not, as popular parlance would have it, a Rolls Royce run on Coca-Cola. Instead they are Model T scenarios written with the brain cells and panache of champagne-standard: an unexpected delight.