So this is where I start working on my thesis. THESIS. NOW.

Father Brown is a complex chareacter devised by G.K. Chesterton to look simple and affable and sometimed bumbling on the surface. Beneath his physical appearance, dumpy with blinking eyes, carrying an umbrella with his clerical collara and hat, he doesn't look at all like the masterful detective that he is.

In the first Father Brown story, "The Blue Cross", we are introduced to Fafther Brown through the invention of an Inspector Valentin, who is hot on the trail of a theif, the notorious Flambeau. It's revealed slowly and though a series of odd seemingly inexplicable acts by Father brown who is conversing with another priest,but who turns out to be Flambeau. The odd acts lead Valentin to them, and at the end when Flambeaus asks Father Brown how he knew who he was, ther e was the famous quote, "You attacked reason. It's bad theology."

This is typical of Chesterton's Father Brown stories, what seems to be a simple mystery p[uzzle to be solved, resonates with an emotional, almost spritual depth, bcause Father Brown iosn't interested in the law, he's interested in people's souls.

Father Brown was based on a friend of Chesterton's, who in a famous anecdote related to him all he know of evil, and when he overheard two university lads talking aobut how the church was seprated fromsocitey that it seemd to him they were two babes in a perambulateor who had never know the depths of evil that Father O'connor had shownto cheswsterton.