Mystery and Crime Chesterton, G.K.: The Man Who Knew Too Much. v1, 22 July 2009

[HarryT]

A collection of eight detective stories by the English novelist and philosopher, G.K. Chesterton, originally published in 1922.

Horne Fisher is "the man who knows too much", a character who is generally thought to be based on Chesterton’s good friend, Maurice Baring. Fisher is a respected member of the upper class, and he seems to know everybody and everything. He would be much happier knowing less than he does. He is weighed down with the burden of knowing “the seamy side of things,” the stinking corruption in the high places of wealth and power. He drags himself languidly from one amazing, appalling event to another, pulling corpses out of cars and wells and summing up the situation with a cool disdain. But he can never report the crimes he solves because governments may fall, reputations may be ruined, aristocrats may squirm. We can get the truth out of Horne Fisher, but not justice. It is because he has a problem: he is himself a complicit member in the criminal governing class.

The overall impression cast by this book may strike some as unpleasant. However, it was reprinted many times after Chesterton’s death while most of his other books languished out-of-print for decades. Why? The answer is simple. The stories are still great detective stories, each of which stands on its own.

There is already a version of this book on MR, but this new version has been thoroughly proof-read against page scans, errors corrected, accented letters restored, and italics and other formatting re-added as required.

Note that there is no connection between this book and the Hitchcock movie of the same name. Other than the name, of course.

Enjoy.

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[cgray4]

Thanks for this. Just a quibble though:

Originally Posted by HarryT

The overall impression cast by this book may strike some as unpleasant. However, it was reprinted many times after Chesterton’s death while most of his other books languished out-of-print for decades.

The Father Brown books are also quite popular. (And there are a lot of them.)

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by cgray4

The Father Brown books are also quite popular. (And there are a lot of them.)

And HarryT has done that already.

[HarryT]

Not my words . The description comes from this essay. Yes, it goes without saying that the "Father Brown" books are Chesterton's best known books by far. As Jellby says, I recently uploaded a new, fully-proofed, omnibus edition containing all five "Father Brown" books.