The Man Who Knew Too Much
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About this ebook
G.K. Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton (1874–1936) was an English writer, philosopher and critic known for his creative wordplay. Born in London, Chesterton attended St. Paul’s School before enrolling in the Slade School of Fine Art at University College. His professional writing career began as a freelance critic where he focused on art and literature. He then ventured into fiction with his novels The Napoleon of Notting Hill and The Man Who Was Thursday as well as a series of stories featuring Father Brown.
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Reviews for The Man Who Knew Too Much
159 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Eight stories of Horne Fisher, gentleman detective. Published in 1922 in both U.S. and England Horne Fisher is a gentleman who knows everyone and knows too much. He balances the criminal against the country’s political positioning. The stories have vague, unsubstantiated clues with lots of descriptions, but light on facts.It reminded me that today our country is, like England in these stories, totally politicized.1. The Face in the Target2. The Vanishing Prince3. The Soul of the Schoolboy4. The Bottomless Well5. The Fad of the Fisherman6. The Hole in the Wall7. The Temple of Silence8. The Vengeance of the Statue
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I'm another person who "read" this book by listening to BJ Harrison's Classic Tales podcast. Without Harrison I probably would never have gotten through it, based on my experience with the Man Who WasThursday, which I stopped after a chapter or two. Chesterton is a pretty decent writer, but like many political/ideological writers (Orwell being an exception) he is way too didactic. His moral perspective (in this case Catholicism and hyper nationalism) often turns the storyline juvenile, over-wrought and maudlin. After a couple of the stories, figuring out the mystery isn't all that difficult - Chesterton tends to re-use the same plot twists each time. The last in the series is almost unbearably awful and embarrassing. Fortunately, Harrison carried me through it to the end. So, as in the HP series, if you really are interested, get the audio book from Harrison.
PS normally xenophobia in these classic tales doesn't bother me at all - different times, different perspectives. But precisely because in this book it was so obviously an expression of Chesterton's ideology, I found it very jarring and off-putting. I know Chesterton was anti-fascist and not a bad man, but I don't find him the least bit admirable. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Apart from knowing that The Man Who Knew Too Much was a detective story and that it was written by G.K. Chesterton, I didn't know much about this book going in. I've read some of the Father Brown stories by Chesterton and really enjoyed them so I was looking forward to sinking my teeth into a Chesterton novel. Sadly, this isn't a novel in the proper sense. Rather, this book is a collection of short detective stories centered around Horne Fisher, the "man who knew too much." Even though it wasn't a complete detective novel, I was still excited to have fun reading the stories.As mentioned, the main protagonist in the stories is a man named Horne Fisher. At the beginning, we know very little about Fisher but as the stories progress, we learn more and more about him and find out he is related to or family friends with a number of very influential people in politics and business. It is presumably through these connections that he obtains a fair amount of his extra knowledge. The rest of his "knowing too much" comes from being hyper-observant in the same sense as another famous detective, the illustrious Sherlock Holmes.I'm sure plenty of people have made the comparison and I'll just repeat it here. Horne Fisher and his stories bear a striking resemblance to the style and format of Sherlock Holmes and his stories. Through each of the stories in the book, Fisher is accompanied by a journalist friend named Harold March. This character acts like Watson in some sense by being asking questions and helping unravel the clues of the mystery. Unlike Watson's narration, the stories in this book are written in 3rd person rather than by March himself. Also, March seems a little more competent a companion to Fisher than Watson is to Holmes. No offense to Watson, but in many of the Sherlock stories, it seems like Watson's primary purpose is to tag along, pay the bills and ask "how could you possibly know that" in order to shine the light on Holmes's brilliance. While March does question Fisher's abilities at times he also has a journalistic flair that allows him to ask more pointed and driving questions that help elaborate some of the political and social problems that Fisher faces.Each individual story is fun and interesting. Some (especially some of the latter in the book) got a little bogged down in political specificity for my taste but they were still fun. As with many detective stories, and more so with a detective like Horne Fisher (or Sherlock Holmes), there are times where the reader feels a little cheated by the conclusion comes by the revelation of some bit of evidence that the reader was never given. Granted, it's difficult to give the reader all of the facts with sufficient detail to allow the reader to solve the mystery while still making sure the details stay obtuse enough to ensure the mystery is tricky to solve and allows the protagonist to show some panache. Detective stories have to straddle the line between giving too many clues and bombarding the reader with red herrings or giving too few clues and making the reader feel a little cheated at the end. It's a tough balancing act.These stories were definitely fun and entertaining. They weren't quite as humorous as Chesterton's Father Brown stories but they weren't overly heavy or dull either. They definitely had that Holmesian feeling while still being different enough to stand on their own. Each story is fairly short and stands entirely on its own which makes for a nice concise bit of reading while still having some meat on its bones. It is written with some of that same formal feeling and style as Sherlock Holmes so if you're looking for a fast-paced mystery novel, this may not quite be what you're looking for. Still, it's a refreshing batch of smart, well crafted mysteries that make for a nice entertaining read.****4 out of 5 stars
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Man Who Knew Too Much is a collection of short stories revolving around... well, the man who knew too much, Horne Fisher. The stories are short murder mysteries in which Mr. Fisher figures out what has happened. The murders are all of a political nature, and much of the time Horne comes to the solution by knowing more than he would like to know about many things, including the many shady aspects of British politics and politicians. Much of the time the true nature of the crime has to be concealed from the public, for the good of themselves and the country they live in. The short stories themselves aren't exceptional, but serve as platforms used by G. K. Chesterton to express thoughts, opinions, and general musings about society, politicians, "the greater good", and so on. While I found some of the stories to be very entertaining in their own right, others started feeling a bit like fairy-tales constructed for the sake of the moral they convey. Nevertheless, while I would have liked to be more gripped by the stories, the many interesting one liners, thoughts, and quotable phrases are, by themselves, reason enough to pick up this book.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A set of mysteries solved by Horne Fisher, the man with too much knowledge.
1. The Face in the Target - Harold Marsh, reviewer and critic, is visiting Torwood Park, owned by Canadian Jefferson Jenkins. Approaching the estate he meets Horne Fisher, cousin to Howard Horne, M.P.,who is a guest on the estate. They witness a fatal car accident, dead is Sir Humphrey Turnbull. Considering the accident how is he dead.
2. The Vanishing Prince - Michael O'Neill seems to have the ability to hide in plain sight. But 3 officers of the law go to arrest him. With Sir Walter Carey, politician, is Horne Fisher.
3. The Soul of the Schoolboy - Why and how is an old coin stolen from an impregnable display box. Again Horne Fisher solves the case.
4. The Bottomless Well - in the Far East next to this well a death occurs.
5. The Fad of the Fisherman - While boating to visit the P.M. Harold March sees two incidents but barely acknowledges them. Meanwhile a murder occurs at his destination.
6. The Hole in the Wall - How can a murdered man disappear.
7. The Temple of Silence - When winning the election for a M.P. does be portrayed as a failure.
8. The Vengeance of the Statue - A murder occurs in a political gathering.
A group of interesting mysteries. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I just finished up this set of short stories starring the laconic, encyclopedic Horne Fisher. With any "series" of formulaic fiction, the question isn't quite what you do with it, but in the dance to get there. So, a basic run down of a Chesterton story of the fishing persuasion -Horne Fischer is an upper-class intellectual who seems to have an absolute acquaintance with the ruling government of Britain and an omnipotence on all subjects, such as fish, art, magic, and politics. Hence the title, "The Man Who Knew Too Much". This knowledge amounts to rather little in the way of an individual story's plot but it does add an amount of wit and charm to what would be an irritating old chap of a protagonist. In most stories, we follow Harold March, a yellow newspaper man with a disturbing lack of personality, morals and lines of dialogue, as he follows Fisher around and acts like Fisher's personal cipher and memory-hole. In most stories, someone's killed, rich people fret anxiously and Fisher concludes the truth via "deduction", or as I like to call it "detective writer's deus ex machina!". Very few of these pieces pass the sniff test, but really, no one who reads "deduction" stories cares about the sniff test, just the "clever" test -- and by golly, Chesterton writes some clever tales.Sometimes, Fisher covers up crime. Sometimes, the crime just goes unpunished. Usually, I didn't care that the story actually ended. All of these stories take place in rich people's houses, rich people's golf clubs, rich people's countryside estates. England's political landscape in the WWI and early twenties forms the most important background, as each story seemingly builds on the previous piece. Brick by brick, Chesterton's Fisher of Men alludes to the world-shattering importance to the lewd, petty murders he investigates. Brick-by-brick, as each villain escapes from true justice into a murky, amoral conspiracy theory, Chesterton builds up to outbreak of world war. And when war happens, according to Fisher, and maybe therefore to Chesterton (I'm no scholar of his), it seems the Jews started it by being moneylenders.What a complete load of crap. It kills the book for me really and turns me off to Chersterton about as much as "White Man's Burden" killed Kipling for me. Which is to say, I've read a novel and I won't really dip into that well again.As a historical piece of fiction, I think I can see the worth in "The Man Who Knew Too Much" - we have a bridge between the Victorian "rightness" of Doyle's Sherlock and the amoral (but usually moral) reflection of life found in Block's Scudder series, to shades of Clancy's political thrillers and Law & Order: Criminal Intent's Detective Goren's similar mixture of psychology, confrontation and esoteric knowledge. The turns of phrase can stop a reader cold in appreciation. The plots fit together as tight and well greased as a good British naval gun. I just wish it didn't show the flaws of the age and maybe the man.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For me, not quite up to Father Brown, but interesting, particularly the one in which a British finance minister poisons a set of millionaires to balance the budget on their death duties.