The Wisdom of Father Brown

By: G. K. Chesterton

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown is perhaps the most lovable amateur detective ever created. This short, shabby priest with his cherubic, round face attracts situations that baffle everyone - except Father Brown and his rather naïve wisdom.

The twelve enthralling stories in this book take Father Brown from London to Cornwall, from Italy to France, as he gets involved with bandits, treason, murder, curses, and an American crime-detection machine. And every problem he comes up against he solves with a simplicity of argument that leaves the other characters wondering, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Stories include:

• “The Absence of Mr. Glass,”
• “The Paradise of Thieves,”
• “The Duel of Dr. Hirsch,"
• “The Man in the Passage”
• “The Mistake of the Machine”
• “The Head of Caesar”
• “The Purple Wig”
• “The Perishing of the Pendragons,”
• “The God of the Gongs,”
• “The Salad of Colonel Cray,”
• “The Strange Crime of John Boulnois”
• “The Fairy Tale of Father Brown”

G. K. CHESTERTON (1874–1936) authored thousands of works, including compilations of his voluminous journalism, novels, short stories, essays, biography, history, criticism, Christian apologetics, poetry, and plays. His work is characterized by tremendous zest and energy, a mastery of paradox, a robust humor, and forthright devotion.

Public Domain (P)1992 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Thoroughly enjoyable. Well read, well written.

The narrator does an excellent job of bringing the text to life with interesting and consistent voice work.

Droll reader quaint at first, but soon tedious

Chesterton's Father Brown stories are all clever and entertaining, yet rife with wisdom. However, the narrator of this edition is problematic.
While his aristocratic English accent is novel and delightfully droll at first, it soon becomes a tedious distraction. His cadences are repetitive, droning on like a bad musical, and his inflections are oddly, even wrongly placed, often making sentence syntax confounding.
Also, his volume trails off at the end of many sentences, so that the listener is forced to rewind several times before giving up on comprehending the full meaning of the sentence.
All this has a somatic, almost hypnotic effect, so that the listener inevitably forgets to listen, attention trailing off into tangential thoughts and daydreams.
In short, it's not an attention grabber.
In all fairness to this narrator, he reads a King Arthur book that I enjoyed; it gave the stories an oddly comical but less off-putting flavor.

Horrible narration

The stories are quite dated, beautifully written, and with that odd catholic theme that doesn’t really register for most people these days. The narrration was all wrong: a creaky, Oxbridge, nasal diction, completely wrong for sweet, diffident father brown, interspersed with a clumsy, stereotypical French accent for the various French characters. This all makes it almost impossible, imo, to focus on the story.

English people were this racist, I suppose?

The stories are not really that entertaining, I have gotten through about 80% of it, mostly half listening. I take the casual racism of British mystery novels of a certain period for granted, but gaaawd, Chesterton’s descriptions of black peoples are disturbing. I got halfway through the story of “N-word Ned” and just couldn’t continue. Yuck.

Good theology. Great format. Superb performance.

I would suggest that anyone who enjoys thinking through their audiobooks should read this title.