Book excerpt: Father Brown is a fictional detective created by G. K. Chesterton. To be exact, he is called Father J. Brown, though we are never told what the initial stands for, and is originally presented as the parish priest of Cobhole in Essex, though he is found in parishes as far afield as Italy and South America. In appearance he is undistinguished, small and dumpy, short-sighted and not particularly intelligent; dressed in shabby clerical black, and carrying an umbrella as dumpy and shabby as himself.The Father Brown mysteries generally appeared first as independent short stories in various magazines; (most of) the stories were eventually collected in a series of five books:The Innocence of Father Brown (1911)The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914)The Incredulity of Father Brown (1926)The Secret of Father Brown (1927), andThe Scandal of Father Brown (1935).Three stories, "The Donnington Affair" (1914) (GKC writing the solution of a mystery set up by Max Pemberton), "The Vampire of the Village" (1936), and "The Mask of Midas" (1936), were published separately, though the second of these was later included in editions of Scandal.