The Wisdom of Father Brown

By: G. K. Chesterton

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

Slow moving murders

GK Chesterton’s Father Brown stories are in the classic Victorian style with long passages of detailed description and slow-moving but complex and ingenious twisting plots. However, these plots are often driven by national and sometimes viscously racist stereotypes, and even someone used to reading literature from this period will be startled and discomfited by it. The narrator’s dry sardonic style of reading feels a little monotonous after a while. Over all, I was a little disappointed.

Loved it, makes you think

You have to pay close attention every minute to even come close in a guess at what happened, and even then you still won't get it right 90% of the time.

Father Brown

This compilation of the Chesterton stories is very well done. Please do not expect this work to be in anyway similar to the BBC/PBS works.
Much like the Conan Doyle works of Sherlock Holmes, the written word and the watched stories have little in common except the name.
With that understanding going forward, you should find these stories entertaining.

Had to read more Father Brown after the first book

What did you love best about The Wisdom of Father Brown?

The stories, like the first book, are wonderful and the mysteries are great fun to solve. As always Father Brown is right in the thick of things, however, Flambeau is almost always present in these stories, which adds a whole new dynamic. I liked that it's almost "the adventures of Father Brown and Flambeau."

Which character – as performed by Frederick Davidson – was your favorite?

The performance was perfect! The narrator sounds just as you think Father Brown ought to and can then seamlessly move into a French accent for Flambeau. There isn't a whole lot of changing the voice to match a character, save if they are notated as being from a specific country of origin, which I liked as it seemed to keep the flow of the book better.

Father Brown Solves Many Short Mysteries.

For some reason I found this book a little harder to follow than the other Father Brown books. These are all masterfully told stories and well worth the listen.