This volume collects 52 of G.K. Chesterton's Father's Brown stories, including the rare story, "The Donnington Affair," which was omitted from the collections published during the author's lifetime. Also included are an "Introduction to Father Brown" and an "About the Author" section.

"For anyone who reads detective fiction at all, G.K. Chesterton and his creation Father Brown are such an important, established part of the furniture as almost to go unnoticed. (What inhabitant of London actually bothers to look at Nelson's Column or—as in one famous Chesterton story—the doings of a postman?) ... [The] Father Brown stories are so cosily familiar that you forget they're the work of a fine and gaudy stylist. Even when dictating stories at high speed to pay the rent or finance his political magazine, even when resorting to the most unlikely contortions of plot, Chesterton outperformed his rivals by sheer style, wit and energy." —David Langford