"Although Chesterton wrote his Father Brown stories hastily (like almost everything else he wrote), often to finance other projects, they contain some of his most gorgeous 'word painting,' and are shaped by the two things that mark his best work: his personality (evident in the narrator and protagonist), and his ideas, which were always moral concerns told like fairy tales.
(Dale 158)

I tremendously disagree with the following conclusion-it fits what a mystic does perfectly.
"His ordinariness is Chesterton's: he is a man of simple tastes who enjoys the simple pleasures. But he is also a shrewd, clever person endowed with extraordinary sensitivity and powers of observation. With this balance of traits, Father Brown is not a mystic, nor is he a very realistic portrait of a parish priest."

(Dale 94)

EEEEEEYAAARGH!!!!!!!!