The Innocence of Father Brown. By G. B. Chesterton. (Cassell.
6e.)—As a revulsion from the personification of a detective in the tall, cold, scientific Sherlock Holmes, Mr. Chesterton presents us with a small, cherubic, and spiritually minded Roman Catholic priest who finds out the perpetrators of crimes through his know- ledge of the human heart, and usually makes the criminals confess and give themselves up to the police. The first story, in which a conventional detective plays the most prominent part and Father Brown pulls the strings behind the scenes, is the most attractive ; but all exhibit great ingenuity in the inventing of astonishing crimes and mysterious situations. Father Brown is an attractive and ingenuous figure, but he fails to convince the reader that he really would have been ready, after short periods of meditation, with such complete and lucid expositions of crimes and their perpetrators.
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