The Queer Feet | A Father Brown story by G. K. Chesterton | A Bitesized Audio Production

When Father Brown is called to the exclusive Vernon Hotel to administer the last rites to a dying member of staff, he manages to detect a crime in progress, and save a soul, all by listening to a few strange footsteps in a corridor...

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Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936) was an English author, theologian, philosopher and critic, who produced a wide-ranging output of fiction, poetry and journalism. His writing covered a wide variety of subjects, ranging from crime fiction to Christianity. His most famous novel is probably the "metaphysical thriller" 'The Man Who Was Thursday' (1908), but his most famous fictional creation is surely Father Brown, the Catholic priest-detective who featured in more than 50 short stories published episodically between 1910 and 1936. A complete contrast to his (near) contemporary Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown is quiet, unassuming and solves crimes with instinct, intuition and a deep understanding of human nature.

'The Queer Feet' reintroduces Flambeau, the master criminal foiled by Father Brown in the very first story, 'The Blue Cross'. Somehow Flambeau has escaped from the clutches of the law and is back to his old habits as a daring and original thief, stealing valuable silverware from under the noses of the members of an exclusive dining club. It is an unusually structured detective story, in that Father Brown solves the crime before we (the reader) are even made aware that any crime has been committed... and then goes on to explain in detail exactly what happened and how he worked out the solution. His explanation includes one of Chesterton's most celebrated lines, in which he says of Flambeau: “I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.” Father Brown has indeed caught Flambeau in more than one sense, and very soon after 'The Queer Feet' the Frenchman renounces his criminal past and becomes a detective himself, assisting Father Brown in a number of later stories, beginning with 'The Invisible Man' (1911).

'The Queer Feet' was first published under the title 'Why the True Fishermen Always Wear Green Evening Coats' in The Saturday Evening Post on 1 October 1910, and subsequently in the November 1910 issue of 'The Story-Teller'. The following year it was published as the third story in 'The Innocence of Father Brown', the first of several books which comprise the Father Brown series.

Recording © Bitesized Audio 2021.