Reviews for Scandal of Father Brown

The average rating for Scandal of Father Brown based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-03-18 00:00:00 George Adele The last compilation of Father Brown stories. I have an early edition of the book; the later ones include one more story, The Vampire of the Village. So my edition (available from Project Gutenberg Canada) has eight short stories. This by the way means there are two more stories, The Donnington Affair and The Mask of Midas which are usually not included in any anthologies. I am happy to say the lightheartedness of the first book is back, at least in one story. I am not going to spoil it even by mentioning the title, but the buildup was great and so was the payoff. As I said before countless number of times Father Brown is by definition of his job is humanist and rarely bothers with helping catching the criminal (in fact in one of the stories here he just reveal the way the villain vanished into seemingly thin air, but the identity of the guy was left unknown). I am also impressed by some of the musings by Father Brown (and by extension Chesterton himself). Some of the thoughts still run true today and regretfully too few people these days remember these truths tirelessly fighting for really trivial causes. So all in all, is the series worth reading? Yes very much so if you like classic mysteries. The character of the Father Brown makes it for somewhat slow read as the action scenes during the investigation are non-existent. The problems themselves almost always contain some element of improbability readily explained by the priest sleuth at the end. The final rating of the book as well as that of the whole series is 4 stars; I gave the lower rating to the second book only. It was mostly due to change of the atmosphere between that one and the first: it became more gloomy and dark. The only question I have after finishing practically everything is, when the heck did the main character find time to do his main work? He never seemed to bother. So dear Father Brown, if you ever do your church duties, that'd be great:

Review # 2 was written on 2019-09-19 00:00:00 Raul Maximus 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.