Chesterton’s “Defense” of Detective Fiction

“There is, however, between a good detective story and a bad detective story as much, or, rather more, difference than there is between a good epic and a bad one. Not only is a detective story a perfectly legitimate form of art, but it has certain definite and real advantages as an agent of the public weal.”—G.K. Chesterton, the “father” of cleric-cum-sleuth Father Brown, defines the multiple values of detective fiction in this 1901 essay.