Last month the Genre Book Club’s topic was cozies, which got me to read THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN by G.K. Chesterton. As I thought, reading this shows how much the style of cozies has changed over the years. Modern cozies like From Beer to Eternity have big supporting casts and play up community and setting. This short-story collection has two recurring characters — Father Brown and the thief turned detective Flambeau — and no fixed setting. The 1970s Father Brown TV series did likewise; the more recent TV show has a much larger supporting cast.
Chesterton is a frustrating man, capable of great insight, great turns of phrase (“Where do you hide a dead leaf? In a dead forest.”) and great bigotry. His anti-Semitism doesn’t figure into these stories but there’s a discussion in “The Wrong Shape” of how all Eastern art is unnatural, wrong and inherently creepy.
At the same time, Chesterton’s storytelling and sense of humor are otherwise delightful. In the opening story, “The Blue Cross,” Flambeau — still a thief — assumes this middle-aged, benign, obviously harmless priest will be easy prey. He’s genuinely shocked to discover that by listening to criminals make confession Father Brown is fully informed about the ways of the underworld (“You — you know about the spiked bracelet?”). Chesterton has a keen understanding of human nature (part of what makes “The Invisible Man” so good) when he’s not blinded by his own biases. Obviously this won’t work for everyone but it still has enough charm I’m glad I reread it.
BLACK MAX Volume III by Frank Pepper, Ken Mennell and Alfonso Font wraps up the saga of WW I ace Maximilian von Klorr who in V1 created a squadron of giant bats, obedient to his every command — now nothing will stop “Black Max” from driving the Allies out of Germany! Alas, British pilot Tim Wilson did indeed stop him, becoming Max’s hated nemesis, a clash that continued on into Volume 2.
V2 worked some changes on the formula and this volume goes even further afield (as I mentioned writing about Von Hoffman’s War, that sort of soft reboot is common enough in British comics). First Black Max strikes an alliance with Gratz, a German scientist with superweapons and an agenda of his own. After Max eventually falls into British hands, he strikes a new alliance with a subterranean race of bat people. It’s a bit too off-brand to be peak Black Max but it still works, though the continued lack of any female characters is not a plus. While the ending leaves the series open for further adventures (if you don’t see the body, they’re not dead) I’m not sorry it ended here,
In WHO COOKED ADAM SMITH’S DINNER? A Story of Women and Economics, Katrine Marçal takes issue with Smith’s explanation for how self-interest moves the world. According to Smith, the grocer and the butcher put dinner on his table because he pays them. This ignores that his widowed mother, who lived with him, cooked Smith’s dinner and otherwise cared for him his entire life.
This leads into a general discussion of how women’s economic contributions — caregiving, cooking, cleaning — are undervalued, if not invisible. This in turn makes it easy to undervalue women and delegate anything too soft and nurturing for ruthless capitalism as women’s work. It’s an interesting book, though some reviews say modern economics is better on these issues than Marçal claims.
Black Max art by Font; all rights to images remain with current holders
