(by theowinthrop on 9 November 2008)

Poor Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Despite having an active fan club to this day, and still having his books published (including such non-Father Brown books as THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY, probably his best remembered novel) his reputation is mired in controversy to this day. The defender of Roman Catholicism and its solutions for the modern world, he is seen (with some reason, unfortunately) as a bigot. His excellent writing style, which is fun when one gets into it, is hampered by his love and overuse of paradox. No other author of his age (including Sir William Schwenck Gilbert) loved paradoxes as much as Chesterton did. Unfortunately in using them he frequently made points that seemed clever but lost the rationale for the original statement ever being used.
Example: Yes, all that glitters IS gold: platinum and uranium are more valuable, but don't glitter. However the original meaning of the phrase was to comment on human goodness as "glittering", so that all that glitters need not be gold.
It would not matter with Chesterton if he looked at my comment. He would probably dismiss my lack of understanding at the underpinnings of his point. He might also make a comment about my ancestry.
Still I do enjoy reading his stories when I can. A few have been put out in editions by Dover Press. But his "Father Brown" stories (he wrote over 40 of them) have never had the universal appeal of the "Holmes" stories of his competitor and friend Conan Doyle. The religious discussions actually fit into the stories quite well, but they do bother non-Catholics. So for all his crusading, his zeal turns off some readers. It is too bad, for he is worth reading.
Kenneth More made this series of the Father Brown stories in the 1970s, but only one season's shows were shot (just 13 episodes). I keep wondering if More's declining health from the Parkinson's disease that killed him a decade later had something to do with this. If so it was unfortunate because he performed the role properly. Most people think of Alec Guinness' turn in THE DETECTIVE (based on the short story, THE BLUE CROSS, which - ironically enough - was not done in the series). Guinness got the Catholic message across, but the wise simplicity of the character was better done by More. Although Brown is constantly meeting celebrities (usually Catholics) he is not pretentious. Guinness wasn't pretentious, but he looked like he fit into the role of a prince of the church (which the good Father is not quite). More looked like a parish priest which is closer to the image Chesterton pushed.
THE THREE TOOLS OF DEATH was an investigation into the apparently overly violent murder of a prominent philanthropist and philosopher of optimism played by James Hayter. Hayter was found dead outside an open window. Inside the room with the open window Brown and the Inspector on the case (Anthony Dutton) find a quantity of rope with a noose at the end, an ax, and a knife (the three tools of death in the title). The Inspector asks how Hayter was killed. Brown mentions he was clubbed to death. The Inspector remarks there was no club found. Brown says, "It was a large green club, called "the Earth"." The millionaire had died from the results of the fall.
So why are there three weapons that were not used to kill the man in the last room he was in when he died? Suspicion falls on the widow of the millionaire (Anne Godley) and his secretary (John Flanagan) who may have been plotting his demise for their own purposes. But after talking to them about Hayter's lifestyle and philosophy, Brown realizes it is not a murder, and the two suspects barely failed in trying to prevent the tragedy.
SPOILER COMING UP: Godley and Flanagan had been noticing a change in Hayter - always full of joviality and happiness he was becoming more and more troubled. They sense what he is up to, and try to prevent it - but his determination beats their attempt.
I won't go into the mechanics of the solution (but it was a neat one, and one I have never seen used in anyone else's mystery stories - not quite like this, anyway). Brown figures it out when he realizes just what a tremendous weight Hayter had taken upon his own personality, and how it was hopelessly too big for the average person to handle. In the end it destroys Hayter.
It was a remarkably interesting mystery, and well done. The fact that I recall it nearly three decades after seeing it just shows how well done the episode was when I first saw it.