The Innocence of Father Brown

Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering ribbon of sea, the boat touched Harwich and let loose a swarm of folk like flies, among whom the man we must follow was by no means conspicuous-nor wished to be. There was nothing notable about him, except a slight contrast between the holiday gaiety of his clothes and the official gravity of his face. His clothes included a slight, pale grey jacket, a white waistcoat, and a silver straw hat with a grey-blue ribbon. His lean face was dark by contrast, and ended in a curt black beard that looked Spanish and suggested an Elizabethan ruff. He was smoking a cigarette with the seriousness of an idler. There was nothing about him to indicate the fact that the grey jacket covered a loaded revolver, that the white waistcoat covered a police card, or that the straw hat covered one of the most powerful intellects in Europe. For this was Valentin himself, the head of the Paris police and the most famous investigator of the world and he was coming from Brussels to London to make the greatest arrest of the century. - Taken from "The Innocence of Father Brown" written by Gilbert Keith ChestertonABOUT THE AUTHORGILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON (29 MAY 1874 - 14 JUNE 1936) BETTER KNOWN AS G. K. CHESTERTON, WAS AN ENGLISH WRITER, LAY THEOLOGIAN, POET, PHILOSOPHER, DRAMATIST, JOURNALIST, ORATOR, LITERARY AND ART CRITIC, BIOGRAPHER, AND CHRISTIAN APOLOGIST. Father Brown is a fictional Roman Catholic priest and amateur detective who is featured in 53 short stories published between 1910 and 1936 written by English novelist G. K. Chesterton. 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 O'Connor (1870-1952), a parish priest in Bradford, who was involved in Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism in 1922. The Innocence of Father Brown, published in 1911, includes: "The Blue Cross", The Story-Teller, September 1910 first published as "Valentin Follows a Curious Trail", The Saturday Evening Post, 23 July 1910"The Secret Garden", The Story-Teller, October 1910. (The Saturday Evening Post, Sep 3, 1910)"The Queer Feet", The Story-Teller, November 1910. (The Saturday Evening Post, Oct 1, 1910)"The Flying Stars", The Saturday Evening Post, 20 May 1911."The Invisible Man"