Dear Internet,
Gilbert
Keith Chesterton was a writer of paradoxes.
The various novellas, novels, and short stories he penned are filled
with them. Just about anything that you
pick up by the man has a paradox at its core.
Not to be confused with the oxymoron which is more a contradiction in
the purest form, Chesterton's paradoxes require the two things that they
present to be both true yet seem like they contradict one another. For example, the courage of a soldier when
caught behind enemy lines can only save his life by throwing away his concern
for his life and risking death. If he
stays still, he will surely die, but if he risks his life, he may save it. Another example would be Chesterton's arguments
for the smallness of man against God yet hugeness to that of the rest of the
universe. But I will not go on and on
since you are most likely wondering what any of this has to do with "Four
Faultless Felons." The title of the
book probably holds a clue.
"Four
Faultless Felons" is a collection of four novellas or shorter tales telling
of four individuals who are more than mere criminals. Each of
the four men tells his tale to reporter Asa Lee Pinion, an American reporter
gone to England to find a story on Count Raoul de Marillac. Pinion goes to London hoping to learn about
the extravagant lifestyle of the count.
In one way, he is not dissapointed.
The count frequently eats expensive dishes and goes out to see the
newest bawdiest plays that are being produced.
It is only when the reporter is left alone with the four men that he
learns the truth. The count is in fact
living a rather penitent lifestyle. All
the dishes he eats are counter to his tastes, and he goes to the plays because
they are boring and uninteresting. The
men that tell Pinion this truth about the count have each committed a crime of
sorts, but there is obviously more to each tale. The crimes committed are murder, fraud, theft,
and treason. Like the count, each man is
counter to what he originally appears.
Together, the men form the "Club of Men Misunderstood."
The
stories are told in a classic detective manner with the catch that there is
usually no crime being committed. The
reader is privy to this understanding just from reading the title of the book. It is understood right from the beginning
that there is going to be mysteries that go beyond the immediate ones being
told, but that does not mean that those mysteries are going to be easy to
solve. I do not wish to even go into the
details of each story since doing so will end up giving away a clue or
two. So, you will just have to take my
word that the tales are each riveting and play out well.
The
book is less like a detective novel than I might be leading on. A normal detective story flows in a rather
strict formula. The various characters
are presented, giving each just enough of a presentation that the audience can
understand them in an instant. The
setting is likewise given such treatment.
Afterwards, the crime is committed.
The clues are presented either at this point or in the following
moments. Depending on the length of the
story, a number of false accusations and incorrect attempts to the solution are
presented. Eventually, the mystery is
solved with the truth being presented to the audience at least and the various characters
at most. In "Four Faultless
Felons," just one of these elements is skewed. The crime itself is given scrutiny. The crime itself is called into
question. The crime itself is brought
forward to testify in the witness chair.
If anything, the book is more of a vanishing act. The crimes, not the criminals, pull escape acts.
I have
already done a review of Chesterton's more famous mystery stories, the Father
Brown books. It would be probably best
to compare this book with those stories since the Father Brown stories are more
widely recognized. In the same way that
the Father Brown stories center around the criminal rather than the crime,
"Four Faultless Felons" center on why the individuals act in the
manner that they do rather than merely figuring out how they pulled off their
actions. It is not enough to know how
the action is committed but to figure out why it is committed in the first place. The motive is what lays down the groundwork
for each tale. Without motive or intent,
a crime is usually just an accident.
Unlike
the Father Brown stories, which are usually less than twenty pages, the stories
here average near the forty five page mark.
Also, the four stories are broken into subsequent chapters. This means that each of the stories is given
a wide birth to be built, examined, and solved.
This of course leads to a number of notable characteristics. With the lengthening of the story, there is
much wider chance for the audience to solve the mystery before the solution is
revealed. Yet at the same time, the
story can become much more intertwined and complicated. Chesterton walks right down the middle
without leaving the reader ensnared in the thicket of connecting lines. The added lengths do not make the stories
convoluted. They allow the stories
greater depth and life, but they also allow Chesterton a greater ability to
explore a specific theme. In the Father
Brown stories, most of the themes would end up being a short speech delivered
out by the amateur sleuth at the end each story. They were very much "and the moral of
the story is" type of deliveries.
This was due to the brevity of the various stories. Here, Chesterton is able to dig into the
themes well before the solution is presented.
He is able to have the characters expand their positions well before the
curtain is going to set. The antagonistic
characters are even able to express themselves without being curtly cut off or summarized.
"Four
Faultless Felons" is a great small collection of mystery stories. The only thing that I wonder is why it went
out of printing for so long. The most
immediate answer in my mind is that it is so similar to another book by Chesterton. "Manalive" is right next to this
book in how it handles crime mysteries.
Unlike this book, "Manalive" attributes all the crimes to a
single individual instead of four.
"Four Faultless Felons" can be considered a continuation of
the same themes, but the breaking up of the crimes allows a small variety of
settings and characters to be created.
Yours in digital,
BeepBoop
P.S. Next week is "The Worm Ouroboros."
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