After 2-3 years, I'm over 600 pages into my battered copy of the Complete Collection of Father Brown Stories.
Some of the Father Brown stories are riveting and others okay, while a few pass by without me hardly noticing them.
Many of the stories are characterised by two key points: Father Brown's detective instinct to quickly see when things don't logically add up, and his Catholic priest ability to see the original sin side of people's souls.
Concerning the latter point, the central message that I take from Chesterton's Father Brown stories is that all human beings are only one or two bad decisions away from committing mortal sin and heinous crime.
This is something that Father Brown, himself, often reflects on at the end of the stories, as he offers insights into the workings of the human soul (e.g. learning to direct it towards virtue rather than vice) to the secular/non-religious sceptics that are willing to listen to him in the stories.
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