FICTION
THE INCREDULITY OF FATHER BROWN. By G. K. Chesterton. (Cassell. 7s. 6d. net.)—Father Brown solves his mysteries with very great ease. His simplicity of character gives him a quickness of intuition that few of us could hope to match. To tell the truth, the reader will probably feel a little jealous of Father Brown's gifts. It is hardly fair that a detective should have so little need of hard work and exhaustive reasoning. Still, Mr. Chesterton's new stories are full of interest. There is nothing really gruesome about them ; but Mr. Chesterton always writes with an ingenuity and a fine cheerfulness which warm the heart. This time the good Father is found unexpectedly in South America. He is wandering along to keep an appointment after a comforting glass of port, when he sees a stick and a dagger striking at him from opposite sides of the road, falls down, and apparently is lifeless. The first murder he must disentangle is, so to speak, his own ; and he acquits himself most creditably. After this we meet him in the United States. So many things happen to him in the United States that we fear Mr. Chesterton sent him there for the sake of American serial rights. There is no occasion for complaint, however; Americans seem to stir the Father to his best efforts ; and, though he is still successful when he comes back to England, he seems not to discover such interesting material for the exercise of his talents. Perhaps this is a realistic detail; we have seen it affirmed that murders are much more popular and grand in the United States than anywhere else in the world. But there is one reproof we would give to Father Brown. It seems too frequently to be his method, when he is warned that evil business is in hand, to wait till the murder is accomplished before he sets to work ; a method which is a trifle unkind. As the title might show, the book contains a little gay and inoffensive propaganda. Many of the characters who meet Father Brown expect him, as a priest, to be hoodwinked by any superstitious nonsense which they invent or which takes them in themselves. They do not realize that an expert in human belief is the last person on earth to fall into superstitions.
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