The Innocence of Father Brown is the first book of five by English novelist G. K. Chesterton, compiling the first 12 detective stories (of 51) of Father Brown. Unlike the more famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown's methods tend to be intuitive rather than deductive. He explains his method in 'The Secret of Father Brown': "You see, I had murdered them all myself... I had planned out each of the crimes very carefully. I had thought out exactly how a thing like that could be done, and in what style or state of mind a man could really do it. And when I was quite sure that I felt exactly like the murderer myself, of course I knew who he was."