The strange case of the simple little priest He has rescued the extremely valuable fish knives and forks of an exclusive dining club called "the Twelve True Fishers," which had been stolen. The thief, he tells the members, has repented. Their reaction is uncomprehending. He explains: "If you doubt the penitence as a practical fact, there are your knives and forks, your silver fish. But He has made me a fisher of men. One of them asks: "Did you catch this man?" Brown replies: "Yes, I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread." This remarkable image for God's grace influenced a number of other Catholic writers who read this story, including Waugh - who centres part of Brideshead specifically around it - and the French dramatist Paul Claudel, in whose play Le Soulier de satin the image of a crafty fisherman playing the fish at the end of his line is used to explain God's hold over the heroine, wherever she may wander. Many different Christian beliefs and attitudes are highlighted in these stories: for instance, the difference between human ideas of charity and the Christian idea of forgiveness. Another bears on the relationship between good and evil: these metaphysical realities are seen, as in many 20th-century Catholic writings (Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, for example), as being far closer to each other than to the grey area in between. Chesterton, who in all his writings revelled in paradox, uses it in these stories in order to shock the reader into reassessing his or her attitudes in relation to religion and unbelief. Several of the stories, for example, centre around the theme that unbelievers are more credulous, in relation to the supernatural, than Christians. On one occasion, Father Brown makes it clear that a character had made a mistake by deciding to describe supernatural events to him, in order to put him off the scent of the truth: "He had the notion that because I am a clergyman I should believe anything. Many people have little notions of that kind. In an ultimate paradox, he suggests that superstition is actually a product of materialism. Underlying all this is one of Chesterton's main themes, that of the parallel between the detective, who solves apparently "insoluble" problems in this life, and the priest, who has certainty that there is "but one solution" to the ultimate mystery that so many see as insoluble. Thus, in these stories, Chesterton takes us from purely material problems of detection, through the interpretations put on them by the priest-detective, to profound insights into ultimate truths. He brilliantly used the techniques of the detective story as camouflage for his deeper purposes. But, in order for him to succeed, that camouflage had to be convincing, and had to attract the unsuspecting readers whom he wished to influence. In other words, he had to write detective stories that would compete with other successful writers in the genre. In this he thoroughly succeeded. The Father Brown stories are enormous fun. They have highly ingenious plots through which the little priest finds his way, and then reveals, to our amazement, simple solutions. Seen merely in this way, the stories are some of the best detective stories ever written. I will therefore not be too disappointed if the new television series merely remains on this level - but it will be a tremendous bonus if something of Chesterton's deeper intentions also gets through. Richard Griffiths is the author of 'The Pen and the Cross" (Continuum)