A review by nimrodel
The Incredulity of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton
3.0
It feels awful to rate a Chesterton book this low, but this series of short mysteries was way too repetitive and occasionally condescending. Chesterton's normal brilliant writing and characters are all here, and if these stories had been mixed in with Father Brown mysteries that followed other themes, it would have been much easier to take.
Every story followed the same basic pattern: setup for a murder that has an apparently uncanny aspect, previously hard-core skeptics and materialists run crying in fear of the supernatural, then Father Brown steps in and explains how the murder was carried out by perfectly mundane means.
As a proud (too proud) Catholic, I'm pretty close to the perfect audience for this kind of narrative;it should be fun to see the anti-Catholics, anti-Christians and their straw men demolished time after time. But even I tired of it quickly, especially since Chesterton conveniently leaves out any materialists with real conviction and/or intelligence.
Every story followed the same basic pattern: setup for a murder that has an apparently uncanny aspect, previously hard-core skeptics and materialists run crying in fear of the supernatural, then Father Brown steps in and explains how the murder was carried out by perfectly mundane means.
As a proud (too proud) Catholic, I'm pretty close to the perfect audience for this kind of narrative;it should be fun to see the anti-Catholics, anti-Christians and their straw men demolished time after time. But even I tired of it quickly, especially since Chesterton conveniently leaves out any materialists with real conviction and/or intelligence.