Father Brown is a fictional Roman Catholic priest and amateur detective who, with shapeless clothes, a large umbrella, and an uncanny insight into human behavior, solves mysteries and crimes. His unremarkable, seemingly naïve appearance hides an unexpectedly sharp intelligence and keen powers of observation. His job as a priest allows him to blend into the background of a crime scene, using his unimposing demeanor to his advantage when studying criminals, to whom he seems to pose no danger.

He is featured in 53 short stories by English author G. K. Chesterton, published between 1910 and 1936. 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.

When he created Father Brown, Chesterton was already famous in Britain and America for his philosophical and paradox-laden fiction and nonfiction. Father Brown was a vehicle for conveying Chesterton’s view of the world and, of all his characters, is perhaps closest to Chesterton’s own point of view, or at least the effect of his point of view. Father Brown solves his crimes through a strict reasoning process more concerned with spiritual and philosophical truths than with scientific details, making him an almost equal counterbalance with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, whose stories Chesterton read. However, The Father Brown series commenced before Chesterton’s own conversion to Roman Catholicism.

Chesterton wrote 25 Father Brown stories between 1910 and 1914, then another 18 from 1923 to 1927, then 10 more from 1930 to 1936. Most of these can be found in The Father Brown Stories.

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