Description

Rating: Not rated

Tags: Chesterton, Lang:en

Summary

This excellent set of stories from G.K. Chesterton exemplifies the lighthearted style with which the author sought to imitate the popular writers of detective fiction.

In applying his humour and writing talents, Chesterton gained a significant fan base of his own. The Man Who Knew Too Much is a selection of stories portraying Horne Fisher - the titular 'man' - in a series of escapades through British high society. Being as he is associated by marriage and station to the Establishment of the UK, many of Fisher's cases surround high profile murders - in the final story, the Prime Minister himself is implicated.

While clearly a lighthearted, even parodying, take on the extremely popular detective fiction, G.K. Chesterton's stories were taken seriously in other circles. Over three decades after this book's original publication in 1922, filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock created an adaptation for the screen which was widely lauded for its suspenseful treatment of intrigue among the societal elite.

Characterised by his easily digestible style, ready use and exposure of paradox, and his use of wit and humour to advance argument, Chesterton's fiction and non-fiction writings on the topics of human behaviour and wider society remain relevant and poignant to this day.

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