Chesterton's Brown and Greeley's Blackie: two very different detectives

Commonweal, August 14, 1992 by A.W.R. Sipe, B.C. Lamb

Blackie Ryan knows the answer because of who he is, and who he is is the Druid of a politically powerful tribe. Whereas Chesterton's Father Brown, virtually without political power, enters a case either through a personal connection with a former sinner or by apparent, but illusory, change, Father Blackie, as a kind of chaplain to one powerful Chicago clan, comes into the picture when this is threatened.

The apparent impossibility of detecting a criminal is another convention of detective fiction; the detective's task is to find the opening in a seamless world. Thus, in Chesterton's "The invisible Man," the victim was quite alone at the time of the murder, being guarded by a watchman above suspicion. Brown's response to the seamless world is to make minute changes in it in order to ascertain its structure. In "The Blue Cross" he switches the contents of a saltcellar and sugar shaker in order to observe his companion's response: "A man generally makes small scene if he finds salt in his coffee; if he doesn't, he has some reason for keeping quiet."

Father Brown set things in disorder to measure the energy or real state of affairs in a case. He drops his parcels on the ground in order to pick them up again. He reserves signs for peaches and Brazil nuts, confuses anthropological categories of "outside the house" and "inside the house" by pitching soup onto a wall (acceptable behavior on the street but not in a restaurant). He reveals what should be kept secret (that he is carrying a valuable object, a cross set with sapphires). He alters his check in a restaurant, but in order to overpay! And then, instead of accepting a refund, he breaks a window to even up the account, thus changing the world slightly to allow lesser (but still inductive) minds to follow his trail.

This species of experiment is necessary, in Brown's world, because the culprit can take any appearance. the thief Flambeau for example, has the power of disguising himself to look like almost anybody: an apple-woman, a grenadier, a duchess, even a priest. No group, or individual, is exempt from the corruption of evil.

In Blackie's world, however, true crimes are committed only by the truly evil, those damned by their very nature. Fortunately, they can usually be identified by their appearance: they are almost always repulsive old men - though they may have attractive handmaidens. In Virgin and Martyr, Catherine Collins is sexually attacked by a drunken old priest. her novice-mistress blames the attack on Cathy. Later, when Cathy is serving as a lay missionary in "Costaguana," she is sold by a sandal-wearing, New Age-talking, people's priest, Father Tuohy, to a monstrous police official who turns her over to his men for torture and rape. In Happy Are Those Thirsty for Justice the murder turns out to be Vinney Nelligan, a "dirty, kinky old man," although for a time Blackie suspects a Vatican hit man who dresses in the traditional ("very heavy") habit of the Franciscans. Happy Are the Meek features a Satanic priest, Father Armande, who has "breath like a sewer," and his doppelganger, Wolfe Tone Quilan, a drooling, sadistic, incestuous drunk.