Father Brown/YMMV
- Crowning Moment of Awesome: Father Brown is very awesome, but one moment that stands out is in "The Queer Feet," when he calmly tells a roomful of rich and privileged aristocrats that the Gentleman Thief has not only escaped, sacrificed his loot, but repented, the reaction is disbelieving. Father Brown calmly answers, "Odd, isn't it, that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man?"
- From the same story, we have another CMOA when Father Brown delivers An Aesop:
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"Yes," he said; "it must be very hard work to be a gentleman; but, do you know, I have sometimes thought that it may be almost as laborious to be a waiter." |
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- Also awesome in "The Queer Feet" is his Badass Boast, when the larger and stronger Flambeau, not recognizing him, says, "I don't want to threaten you." Father Brown replies that he wants to threaten the thief, and then finishes up with, "I am a priest, Monsieur Flambeau ... and I am ready to hear your confession." Just hearing that makes Flambeau stagger and have to sit down.
- Fridge Logic: In the first story, when Flambeau asks for the package, he reveals that he actually swiped it some time ago in the next sentence. Why would he then stay with Father Brown and ask for it at all?
- Flambeau likes to get fancy with his crimes. For example, at one point he lists various types of people that can be profitably robbed or swindled, along with the appropriate setting for the crime in each case. He certainly seems to have enjoyed The Reveal in this particular instance...
- Uncanny Valley: Evoked in several stories, e.g., "The Head of Caesar."
- Values Dissonance: Chesterton's racial and national attitudes were actually very moderate for the early twentieth century, but some will often strike a sour note for modern readers in the midst of his most enjoyable works, as for example in "The God of the Gongs." His religious views, on the other hand, were entirely conscious, and will strike the reader as either refreshingly forthright or offensively aggressive, according to taste.
- This article published at the Golden Age of Detective Fiction Forum The Sins of the Saint: Racism in GK Chesterton written by a Chesterton’s fan, analyzes 15 Father Brown’s tales that seem to contain this and absolves some of Unfortunate Implications… and others not. It also points that a lot of classic authors of Detective Literature (Agatha Christie, McDonald, Burton Stevenson) also had racist views, and he asks the reader to take in mind the purpose of the work (they were not racist propaganda).