The Wisdom of Father Brown

A priest with hobbies
enjoys debunking curses,
taming French bad boys.

I picked this second book of Father Brown up because a friend was talking about how much she liked the Father Brown tv show. I am not a particular fan of short stories. I like more than what can be revealed in a short story.

And short story mysteries in particular seem to be reduced to too simple stories or slight of hand. I was saying to my friend (who was favorably comparing Father Brown to Grantchester) that I liked Father Brown as an idea, but that he didn't seem fully fleshed out. He was too good, both in the way he solves mysteries and personally. Maybe I am just a creature of this age and want my heroes to be a bit less perfect, but the less than perfect parts of Father Brown are not humanizing, they are characteristics of his age. I know Chesterton is writing against some of the scientific racism and social darwinism in these stories, but the age of the stories shows. There is a lot of cultural stereotyping.

I also am not a fan of the narrator. So that did not help me want to stick these out. I stayed with it for over two hours. But I am moving on.