THE SCANDAL OF FATHER BROWN

1935. London...: Cassell and Company, (1935). Original dark blue cloth with spine lettered in gilt, with dust jacket.

First Edition of this collection of eight cases solved by Father Brown, the diminutive Roman Catholic priest / amateur detective. This was the fifth and last collection of Father Brown cases, preceded by THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN (1911), THE WISDOM... (1914), THE INCREDULITY... (1926), and THE SECRET... (1927); Chesterton died the year after this one was published. ...It was in his series of Father Brown stories that Chesterton gave life to one of the most famous and best-loved of fictional detectives... The little Roman Catholic priest's main preoccupation is with the moral and religious aspects of the crimes he is solving, rather than the apprehension of the criminal and the administration of legal punishment. With his psychological approach to the problems of human frailty, and his endowment of the guilty with good as well as bad qualities, Chesterton's works of detective fiction assume a special importance in the genre... [Quayle]. Father Brown has appeared numerous times on the big screen and on television. This is a fine, bright copy, which is in a very good-plus dust jacket (one dime-sized chip at the top of a turn-in fold, a few short closed tears with cello-tape reinforcement on the verso). This is an uncommon book in jacket. Quayle Detective Fiction pp 86-88.