G. K. Chesterton this week on BBC Radio 7.

Alec Guinness in
Father Brown (1954)

Short stories featuring G. K. Chesterton's wise priest Father Brown are on tap this week on BBC Radio 7, including "The Blue Cross," "The Queer Feet," "The Eye of Apollo," "The Invisible Man," and "The Honor of Israel Gow." Go here for the schedule or to listen; most episodes can be heard online for a week after broadcast.

Eddie Chapman, Doctor Syn, Father Brown this week on BBC Radio 7.

Featured this week on BBC Radio 7: Agent Zigzag, about ex-con and British World War II double agent Eddie Chapman (whose story was dramatized in 1966's Triple Cross, starring Christopher Plummer) and G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown; plus Russell Thorndike's swashbuckling vicar Doctor Syn rides again in The Further Adventures of Doctor Syn. Go here for the schedule or to listen.

Father Brown, Sexton Blake on BBC Radio7.

This week on BBC Radio 7: Discussions of G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown and the "poor man's Sherlock Holmes," Sexton Blake, as well as a dramatization of Chesterton's "The Absence of Mr. Glass" (1912). Go here for this week's schedule.

For more things Chesterton, see the blog of the American Chesterton Society.

About the photo: Kenneth More as Father Brown (DVDs available from Acorn Media)

Where's the Beef?

"I was just thinking," [Sergeant Beef] continued. "How useful it is to be the kind of detective I am. Ex-policeman. Ordinary sort of chap. None of your ritzy types with titles and private incomes." (Murder in Miniature 40)

Over the years, Academy Chicago Publishers has showcased gems of mystery literature in inexpensive editions (e.g., Celia Fremlin's Edgar-winning The Hours Before Dawn). That's certainly the case with Leo Bruce's Murder in Miniature and Other Stories, introduced by Margery Allingham Society chairman B. A. Pike. Bruce, aka Rupert Croft-Cooke, created the stalwart Sergeant Beef as the deliberate antithesis of aristocratic sleuths such as Lord Peter Wimsey. This collection of tales—which largely appeared in the Evening Standard in the early 1950s—feature him, the equally shrewd Sergeant Grebe, or others in delightful puzzle mysteries. In "Murder in Miniature," the title story, Beef confronts the body of a dwarf that literally tumbles into his lap on a train. I particularly enjoyed "On the Spot," in which a detective inspector believes he can commit the perfect crime.

Sergeant Beef also can be seen in Academy Chicago's The Case for Three Detectives, where he is pitted against parodies of Wimsey, Poirot, and Father Brown.

In addition to producing his substantial fiction and nonfiction work, Croft-Cooke served as book critic for The Sketch. His play Banquo's Chair was adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1959).

Happy birthday, G. K. Chesterton.

Renaissance man G. K. Chesterton---poet, critic, newspaper columnist, playwright, theologian, Detection Club member, and creator of that gentle but wise sleuth Father Brown---was born today in 1874. He died in 1936.

The 26th annual Chesterton Conference, scheduled for June 14-16 at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, will celebrate the 100th anniversary of The Man Who Was Thursday. Go here for the Mercury Theater radio production of The Man Who Was Thursday. Read Chesterton's comments about the novel here.

The Chesterton University decal comes from the American Chesterton Society. You can get it and a number of other Chesterton products here.

"The first essential value of the detective story lies in this, that it is the earliest and only form of popular literature in which is expressed some sense of the poetry of modern life."--G. K. Chesterton, "A Defence of Detective Stories," The Defendant (1901)