The Innocence of Father Brown

Father Brown is a fictional Roman Catholic priest and amateur detective. He is featured in 53 short stories by English author G. K. Chesterton, published between 1910 and 1936. Father Brown solves mysteries and crimes using his intuition and keen understanding of human nature. Chesterton loosely based him on the Rt Rev. Msgr John OConnor (1870–1952), a parish priest in Bradford, who was involved in Chestertons conversion to Catholicism in 1922. Father Brown was a vehicle for conveying Chestertons worldview and, of all of his characters, is perhaps closest to Chestertons own point of view, or at least the effect of his point of view. Father Brown solves his crimes through a strict reasoning process more concerned with spiritual and philosophic truths than with scientific details, making him an almost equal counterbalance to Sir Arthur Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes, whose stories Chesterton read.