“A crime…is like any other work of art.” #shortstoryseptember #20BOS26 Book 36

Sometimes a book crosses your path at exactly the right time, and that happened to me recently when I was browsing in a British Heart Foundation charity shop. As I mentioned in my August round up, we had a little shopping mooch in celebration of my mum, an ace shopper, and I found four bargains in the BHF. One of those I pounced on, as it was irresistible – “The Complete Father Brown Stories” by G.K. Chesterton. After enjoying some of these tales in British Library Crime Classic anthologies, I had been telling myself recently that I really should read more of his adventures – so this find was timely and perfect! In addition, it slotted in beautifully for Short Story September; so I read the first collection, “The Innocence of Father Brown” and had a whale of a time! “Innocence” was first published in 1911 and it contains 12 stories which not only introduced us to a small, round Catholic priest called Father Brown, but also to the arch criminal Flambeau. In the first tale, the latter…