Audiobook · read by volunteers
Man Who Knew Too Much
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936)
Read by Martin Clifton · 8 chapters · 5 h 49
About the book
Horne Fisher is a political insider with a tired manner and a restless conscience. He belongs to the powerful families that run England, he knows their secrets, and in each of these eight stories he is drawn into a puzzling crime: a man shot in the middle of a target, a prince who seems to vanish, and a tale named for the soul of a schoolboy. Fisher can see the solution almost at once, but knowing the truth is one thing and being free to act on it quite another. The more he knows, the more he sees how closely crime is tied to the world of rank and influence. Martin Clifton reads the stories in just under six hours. It is a thoughtful, atmospheric collection for readers who like mystery with moral depth.
Introduction
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was an influential and prolific English writer of the early twentieth century: a journalist, a poet and a novelist, with some eighty books and two hundred short stories to his name. He is perhaps best remembered for the Father Brown stories, two collections of which are available from LibriVox as well. The Man Who Knew Too Much, which appeared in the early 1920s, is a different kind of detective book.
Its hero, Horne Fisher, is connected to, and indeed related to, many high-ranking politicians of his age, and he therefore knows too much about the background of the mysteries in which he becomes involved. Unlike Father Brown, who gently exposes sinners, Fisher often finds that justice cannot be done without damaging the people who hold power. This gives the stories a darker and more political tone, and a sense of tragedy that is unusual in the genre.
The audio edition has eight chapters, with titles such as The Face in the Target, The Vanishing Prince and The Soul of the Schoolboy. It lasts about 5.8 hours and is read by one LibriVox volunteer, Martin Clifton.
Today the book is worth hearing for its inventive puzzles, its sharp comments on the ruling class, and Chesterton's gift for paradox. It is a good choice for listeners who think they have read every classic detective story. The book's structure, eight self-contained stories, makes it simple to listen in parts, one story at a time. Each has its own puzzle, setting and surprise, and yet the sense of a larger pattern grows, as the detective's weariness deepens and his view of the world becomes ever more complicated.
Public domain
G. K. Chesterton died in 1936: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text