Scandal of Father Brown Book

Dame Agatha and Her Peers
BOOK/Short 3
From this 1935 collection I chose the title story to review. How many people do we see, today, who are famous only for being famous? That's nothing new as Chesterton points out in this short. 'Beauty, and being the daughter of a rich man, are things not rare in her country [America]; but to these she added whatever it is that attracts the wandering eye of journalism. It was...the modern substitute for mythology."
CAST = 4 stars: We have Father Brown whose been often presented in numerous publications. He likes to watch, observe, comment. Here, he watches Hypatia Potter (the beauty from above) rule over a resort in Mexico, a temporary Queen of the Media. Then we have her lover (maybe), Rudel Romanes, "the poet whose works had been so universally popularized by being vetoed by libraries or prosecuted by the police." Then there is the journalist Agar P. Rock who hates with a 'holy and righteous hatred' from his position on the Minneapolois Meteor. Rock is indeed a hateful person himself, and I'll spare those reading this review his racist and xenophobic comments. Then there is Mr. Potter who is only the husband of Hypatia. Chesterton does a very good job with just Brown and 3 characters: the author's social comments and awareness are oddly prescient in 2019, 80+ years after this work was written. A truly memorable cast.
ATMOSPHERE = 2 stars: We have a resort for those with money but little else, and that's odd for an author writing during the Golden Age of Mystery.
PLOT = 3 stars: Will Hypatia leave her husband for the famous, glorious, steamy hot (or not) Mexican poet/lover? Will Agar Rock's reports of the degenerate Mexicans and of Father Brown's 'scandalous actions' spread through the entire world within half an hour or so? (Yes, of course, even in the 1930s when Social Media was the telephone and newspapers.) Has anything changed about the desperate need of publicity since the 1930s? (Need you ask?) Will anyone bother with follow-up stories about what really happened in this Mexican resort. (No, of course not.) Will this scandal be changed and upped to Everest proportions in the years that follow? (Of course!)
INVESTIGATION - 2: Father Brown just sits in the lobby and reads and watches, he need ask not a single question.
SOLUTION - 3: It's very clever but says more about social issues and the need for publicity than about crime.
SUMMARY - 2.8. As a social statement, this is a very good work. But as a work of crime/detection, it's fine and solid for 3 stars here on goodreads.