Comparing Father Brown And A Morbid Taste For Bones

A detective – the one who solves the mystery of a crime, clever, wise, and knowledgeable. Yet detectives are not always the obvious type, as is exemplified by a both a novel and a series of short stories. In G. K. Chesterton’s Favorite Father Brown Stories, the wise detective is not a usual detective. As implied by his name, Father Brown was an English village priest in the 19th or 20th century, who ended up being the one to solve or lead another to solving a crime or finding the criminal. Another unlikely detective was Ellis Peter’s Brother Cadfael, a Welsh monk in the 12th century, whose detective skills were well used in A Morbid Taste for Bones to solve the murder of a Welsh nobleman. These two detectives, although in very distinct stories …show more content…
In another story he used the observations of a criminologist to determine that no crime had occurred but that the apparent evidence just showed that the young man in question was only a ventriloquist and a magician. Brother Cadfael, although he may have solved other crimes in other stories, solved the mystery of only one crime in A Morbid Taste for Bones. He was definitely motivated by wanting everything to turn out well for everyone, and as one who had the least personal interest in the overall circumstances, and as a Welshman himself, he was in a suitable position to solve the crime When the monks of his abbey attempted to obtain the bones of Welsh St. Winifred, Cadfael journeyed with them as interpreter. However, tension rose as a neighboring lord, Rhisiart, and the people of the town were reticent to let St. Winifred’s bones go. This climaxed in the murder of Rhisiart by one of Cadfael’s own young fellow monks, because of the Rhisiart’s reticence to give up the bones of his town’s saint. Cadfael, the only Welsh monk, and the one with perhaps the least zeal for obtaining the bones, set out to help the slain man’s daughter find the criminal. His job was further complicated by the selfish attitudes of the other monks, the …show more content…
First of all, neither one of them was the type of person one would expect to be a detective, as monks and priests choose to live lives largely separate from the world. However, their sources for their knowledge of crimes were different. Father Brown acquired his knowledge of criminals from listening to confessions, and Brother Cadfael obtained his knowledge from fighting in the Crusades and living in the world in his youth. Because of their unique backgrounds and their personalities, they each have their own methods and tools for solving crimes. Some of their similar means were looking for physical evidence and observing people. Cadfael was able to accomplish this second part through making traps, such as using superstitions. Many of the people around him believed that when the criminal touched the victim’s heart, the victim would bleed, although dead. Cadfael arranged situations so that several people, including those innocent, like himself, had to do this, and by this trap he was able to observe whether or not these people were willing to touch the victim. In the Salad of Colonel Cray, Father Brown heard unusual noises and decided to investigate. He also conversed with the people involved, watched them, and looked for physical evidence. At one point he put his head into a dustbin, and, as the reader later discovers, found and took for later use valuable evidence from the crime