The Man Who Knew Too Much (book)

Last updated

The Man Who Knew Too Much: And Other Stories
TheManWhoKnewTooMuch.jpg
First edition
Author G. K. Chesterton
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Genre Detective stories
Publisher Cassell and Company (U.K.)
Harper Brothers (U.S.)
Publication date
1922
Media typePrint (hardback)
Pages308

The Man Who Knew Too Much: And Other Stories (1922) is a book of detective stories by English writer G. K. Chesterton, published in 1922 by Cassell and Company in the United Kingdom, and Harper Brothers in the United States. [1] [2] [3] [4] It contains eight connected short stories about "The Man Who Knew Too Much", and unconnected stories featuring other heroes/detectives. The United States edition contains one of these additional stories: "The Trees of Pride", while the United Kingdom edition contains "Trees of Pride" and three shorter stories: "The Garden of Smoke", "The Five of Swords" and "The Tower of Treason".

Contents

First publication

The stories were first published in Harper's Monthly Magazine between April 1920 and June 1922: [5]

Other stories that were added in the book:

  1. "The Trees of Pride"
  2. "The Garden of Smoke" (U.K. edition only)
  3. "The Five of Swords" (U.K. edition only)
  4. "The Tower of Treason" (U.K. edition only)

The Man Who Knew Too Much stories

Horne Fisher, "The Man Who Knew Too Much", is the protagonist of the first eight stories. In the final story, "The Vengeance of the Statue", Fisher notes: "The Prime Minister is my father's friend. The Foreign Minister married my sister. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is my first cousin." Because of these intimate relationships with the leading political figures in the land, Fisher knows too much about the private politics behind the public politics of the day. This knowledge is a burden to him in the eight stories, because he is able to uncover the injustices and corruptions of the murders in each story, but in most cases the real killer gets away with the killing because to bring him openly to justice would create a greater chaos: starting a war, reinciting Irish rebellions or removing public faith in the government.

In the seventh story, "The Fad of the Fisherman", the Prime Minister himself is the murderer, who kills the financier whose country house he is visiting because the financier is trying to start a war with Sweden over "the Danish ports". By killing his host, the Prime Minister seeks to avoid a war in which many more people would die, and the financier would profit at the cost of thousands of lives.

In "The Vanishing Prince", an Irish rebel, Michael, is cornered in a tower, but a junior policeman named Wilson kills two senior police officers to be promoted in the field to become officer in charge of the case. He then tries to blame the two murders on the rebel to ensure he is hanged. The rebel, otherwise a gentleman, is enraged and shoots (but only wounds) Wilson. Fisher, however, is forced to arrest Michael: "Wilson recovered, and we managed to persuade him to retire. But we had to pension that damnable murderer more magnificently than any hero who ever fought for England. I managed to save Michael from the worst, but we had to send that perfectly innocent man to penal servitude for a crime we know he never committed; but it was only afterwards that we could connive in a sneakish way at his escape. And Sir Walter Carey is Prime Minister of this country, which he would probably never have been if the truth had been told of such a horrible scandal in his department. It might have done for us altogether in Ireland; it would certainly have done for him. And he is my father's oldest friend, and has always smothered me in kindness. I am too tangled up in the whole thing, you see, and I was certainly never born to set it right."

Fisher is accompanied in the stories by a political journalist, Harold March, but rather than being his "Watson", the stories are all written in the third person. Less a clumsy foil to reflect Fisher's brilliance, March is more of a sounding board for Fisher to discuss Chesterton's paradoxes and philosophy. Apart from the first story, in which March meets Fisher, and the final story, the stories have no internal chronology, and so can be read in any order.

The other four stories are similar in style and format to the main eight, as well as to Chesterton's Father Brown stories, but each is unconnected, with its own protagonist. All the stories are around 20 to 30 pages in length, except "The Trees of Pride", which is 67 pages long in the first edition, and divided into four chapters.

Movies

The 1934 film and its 1956 remake have nothing except the title in common with this book. Alfred Hitchcock, who directed both films, decided to use the title because he held the film rights for some of the book's stories.

The 1979 Soviet movie The Face in the Target (Litso na misheni  [ ru ]) was based partly on The Man Who Knew Too Much and partly on Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">G. K. Chesterton</span> English author and Christian apologist (1874–1936)

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, philosopher, Christian apologist, a literary and art critic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Bernard Shaw</span> Irish playwright, critic, and polemicist (1856–1950)

George Bernard Shaw, known at his insistence as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Galsworthy</span> English novelist and playwright

John Galsworthy was an English novelist and playwright. He is best known for his trilogy of novels collectively called The Forsyte Saga, and two later trilogies, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. He was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edmund Clerihew Bentley</span> English author

Edmund Clerihew Bentley, who generally published under the names E. C. Bentley or E. Clerihew Bentley, was an English novelist and humorist, and inventor of the clerihew, an irregular form of humorous verse on biographical topics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Takahashi Korekiyo</span> Japanese politician (1854–1936)

Viscount Takahashi Korekiyo was a Japanese politician who served as a member of the House of Peers, as prime minister of Japan from 1921 to 1922, and as the head of the Bank of Japan and Ministry of Finance.

<i>The Mysterious Affair at Styles</i> 1920 Poirot novel by Agatha Christie

The Mysterious Affair at Styles is the first detective novel by British writer Agatha Christie, introducing her fictional detective Hercule Poirot. It was written in the middle of the First World War, in 1916, and first published by John Lane in the United States in October 1920 and in the United Kingdom by The Bodley Head on 21 January 1921.

The Man Who Knew Too Much may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1922 United Kingdom general election</span>

The 1922 United Kingdom general election was held on Wednesday 15 November 1922. It was won by the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law, which gained an overall majority over the Labour Party, led by J. R. Clynes, and a divided Liberal Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Father Brown</span> Character created by British writer G.K. Chesterton.

Father Brown is a fictional Roman Catholic priest and amateur detective. He features in 53 short stories by English author G. K. Chesterton, published between 1910 and 1936. Father Brown solves mysteries and crimes using his intuition and keen understanding of human nature. Chesterton loosely based him on the Rt Rev. Msgr John O'Connor (1870–1952), a parish priest in Bradford, who was involved in Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism in 1922. Since 2013, the character is portrayed by Mark Williams in the ongoing BBC Television Series Father Brown.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Max Brand</span> American writer

Frederick Schiller Faust was an American writer known primarily for his Western stories using the pseudonym Max Brand. He also created the popular fictional character of young medical intern Dr. James Kildare for a series of pulp fiction stories. His Kildare character was subsequently featured over several decades in other media, including a series of American theatrical movies by Paramount Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), a radio series, two television series, and comics. Faust's other pseudonyms include George Owen Baxter, Evan Evans, George Evans, Peter Dawson, David Manning, John Frederick, Peter Morland, George Challis, Peter Ward, Frederick Faust and Frederick Frost. As George Challis, Faust wrote the "Tizzo the Firebrand" series for Argosy magazine. The Tizzo saga was a series of historical swashbuckler stories, featuring the titular warrior, set in Renaissance Italy.

Maurice Baring was an English man of letters, known as a dramatist, poet, novelist, translator and essayist, and also as a travel writer and war correspondent, with particular knowledge of Russia. During World War I, Baring served in the Intelligence Corps and Royal Air Force.

The Marconi scandal was a British political scandal that broke in mid-1912. Allegations were made that highly placed members of the Liberal government under the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith had profited by improper use of information about the government's intentions with respect to the Marconi Company. They had known that the government was about to issue a lucrative contract to the British Marconi company for the Imperial Wireless Chain and had bought shares in an American subsidiary.

This is a list of the books written by G. K. Chesterton.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lloyd George ministry</span> Government of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922

Liberal David Lloyd George formed a coalition government in the United Kingdom in December 1916, and was appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom by King George V. It replaced the earlier wartime coalition under H. H. Asquith, which had been held responsible for losses during the Great War. Those Liberals who continued to support Asquith served as the Official Opposition. The government continued in power after the end of the war in 1918, though Lloyd George was increasingly reliant on the Conservatives for support. After several scandals including allegations of the sale of honours, the Conservatives withdrew their support after a meeting at the Carlton Club in 1922, and Bonar Law formed a government.

<i>The Man Who Knew Too Much</i> (1934 film) 1934 film by Alfred Hitchcock

The Man Who Knew Too Much is a 1934 British spy thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, featuring Leslie Banks and Peter Lorre, and released by Gaumont British. It was one of the most successful and critically acclaimed films of Hitchcock's British period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Stanley, 1st Baron Ashfield</span> British-American businessman and politician

Albert Henry Stanley, 1st Baron Ashfield,, born Albert Henry Knattriess, was a British-American businessman who was managing director, then chairman of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) from 1910 to 1933 and chairman of the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) from 1933 to 1947.

G.K.'s Weekly was a British publication founded in 1925 by writer G. K. Chesterton, continuing until his death in 1936. Its articles typically discussed topical cultural, political, and socio-economic issues yet the publication also ran poems, cartoons, and other such material that piqued Chesterton's interest. It contained much of his journalistic work done in the latter part of his life, and extracts from it were published as the book The Outline of Sanity. Precursor publications existed by the names of The Eye-Witness and The New Witness, the former being a weekly newspaper started by Hilaire Belloc in 1911, the latter Belloc took over from Cecil Chesterton, Gilbert's brother, who died in World War I: and a revamped version of G. K.'s Weekly continued some years after Chesterton's death by the name of The Weekly Review.

<i>The Book of Fantasy</i> 1940 anthology of short stories and poetry

The Book of Fantasy is the English translation of Antología de la literatura fantástica, an anthology of approximately 81 fantastic short stories, fragments, excerpts, and poems edited by Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Silvina Ocampo. It was first published in Argentina in 1940, and revised in 1965 and 1976. Anthony Kerrigan had previously translated a similar work by the same editors, Cuentos breves y extraordinarios (1955) as Extraordinary Tales, published by Herder & Herder in 1971. The 1988 Viking Penguin edition for English-speaking countries includes a foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fulton Oursler</span> American dramatist

Charles Fulton Oursler was an American journalist, playwright, editor and writer. Writing as Anthony Abbot, he was an author of mysteries and detective fiction. His son was the journalist and author Will Oursler (1913–1985).

<i>Candour</i> (magazine) British far-right-wing magazine

Candour is a British far-right political magazine founded by the British far-right journalist and political activist A. K. Chesterton, appearing weekly from 1953 to 1960, and in to eight to ten issues per year by 1999. The magazine displayed a "stolidly conservative" stance under the leadership of Chesterton, who feared that open racial hatred would tarnish the magazine's reputation and tried to cultivate a more respectable, conservative image. After Chesterton's death in 1973, Candour was edited by Rosine de Bounevialle until her own death in 1999. Since that year, the magazine has appeared intermittently under editor-in-chief Colin Todd, with an associated website.

References

  1. "The Man Who Knew Too Much". The Hartford Courant . 24 December 1922. p. SM12. ISSN   1047-4153. OCLC   8807834 . Retrieved 25 August 2012.(subscription required)
  2. "On Knowing Too Much". Los Angeles Times . 29 March 1925. p. B4. ISSN   0458-3035. OCLC   3638237 . Retrieved 25 August 2012.(subscription required)
  3. "When the political cost of justice is too high". The Washington Times . 16 October 1997. ISSN   0732-8494. OCLC   8472624 . Retrieved 25 August 2012.(subscription required)
  4. "G.K. CHESTERTON, 62, NOTED AUTHOR, DIES; Brilliant English Essayist and Master of Paradox Is a Heart Disease Victim". The New York Times . 15 June 1936. ISSN   0362-4331. OCLC   1645522 . Retrieved 25 August 2012.(subscription required)
  5. See e.g. OCLC   367484558.
  6. "Veidas taikinyje (TV Mini Series 1978– )". IMDb. Retrieved 18 July 2021.