IT HAS BEEN widely and perhaps accurately stated that Father Brown is the second greatest English detective in all of literature, surpassed only, it is superfluous to say, by Sherlock Holmes. What separates him from most of his crime-fighting colleagues is his view that wrongdoers are souls in need of redemption rather than criminals to be brought to justice. The rather ordinary-seeming Roman Catholic priest possesses a sharp, subtle, sensitive mind, with which he demonstrates a deep understanding of human nature to solve mysteries.
Father Brown is a logical creation of Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936), a converted and extremely devout Catholic who believed that religion was the world’s only refuge. There were five collections of stories about the gentle little priest: The Innocence of Father Brown (1911), The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914), The Incredulity of Father Brown (1926), The Secret of Father Brown (1927), and The Scandal of Father Brown (1935); The Father Brown Omnibus, assembled in 1951, added a stray story, “The Vampire of the Village.” There were two films about the sleuth—Father Brown, Detective (1934, starring Walter Connolly) and Father Brown, released in the United States as The Detective (1954, with Alec Guinness in the titular role)—oddly both based on the same tale, “The Blue Cross,” the first Father Brown story. Chesterton wrote many other stories and novels about various types of crime, notably the allegorical The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), and several volumes of stories that displayed his love of paradox and whimsicality.
“The Invisible Man” was first published in the February 1911 issue of Cassell’s Magazine; it was first collected in The Innocence of Father Brown (London, Cassell, 1911).