The Man Who Knew Too Much

The Man Who Knew Too Much is a compilation of eight detective stories by the English philosopher and prolific writer G. K. Chesterton. The protagonist of these stories is the man of the title, Horne Fisher, an upper-class detective whose investigative gifts often put him in uncomfortable situations where he has to take difficult decisions. In stories like "The Face in the Target" and "The Vengeance of the Statue," which are all told by a third-person narrator, Fisher uses his deductive faculties and theatrical representations to absolve the innocent and incriminate the guilty. Most of the crimes dealt with in these stories are about mysterious murders. Yet, Fisher has also to solve other cases related to theft as well as to disputes over money and estates. Due to his friendly or family relationships with influential statesmen, Fisher often finds himself with "too much" knowledge about the way things are run in the country. This paradoxically valuable and embarrassing knowledge forces him many a time to let the murderer get away with his crime in order to avoid something more dangerous to happen to the country such as war or rebellion.