About the Stories

These stories are the original source material for the current hit BBC TV show "Father Brown" starring Mark Williams. Chesterton's priest-sleuth was loosely based on Father John O'Connor, a parish priest in Bradford, who was involved in Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism in 1922. By bringing murder and mayhem into the genteel setting of a village parish, Chesterton pioneered the "cozy" mystery genre which Agatha Christie and others would further develop in subsequent decades.