Father Brown is one of the greatest detectives to ever grace the page. While not quite as famous as Sherlock Holmes, he has proved an equally enduring character. I am so happy to be able to offer some of these classic mysteries for low vision readers.

In his Letters from Prison, Antonio Gramsci explains what makes Father Brown mysteries so wonderful:

Father Brown is the Catholic priest who through the refined psychological experiences offered by confession and by the persistent activity of the fathers’ moral casuistry, though not neglecting science and experimentation, but relying especially on deduction and introspection, totally defeats Sherlock Holmes, makes him look like a pretentious little boy, shows up his narrowness and pettiness. Moreover, Chesterton is a great artist while Conan Doyle was a mediocre writer, even though he was knighted for literary merit; thus in Chesterton there is a stylistic gap between the content, the detective story plot, and the form, and therefore a subtle irony with regard to the subject being dealt with, which renders these stories so delicious.

Personally, I’m in no position to call Sir Arthur Conan Doyle a mediocre writer, but he is right to say that G. K. Chesterton’s writing is “delicious.” There is an unpretentious poetry and sophisticated understanding of human psychology that is rare treat, especially while maintaining the pace that makes these stories such riveting page-turners. This is detective fiction at its very finest.