G. K. Chesterton, who was spiritually grounded in Catholicism, was no one-dimensional thinker. Rather, he used his writing to explore questions of Christian theology and to observe humanity in all its complexity. Detective fiction is often employed to examine the processes of human behavior, and with his underpinning of social commentary, Chesterton’s worldview is not necessarily comparable to that of the religiously motivated C. S. Lewis; rather, it has more in common with the behavioral observations of Oscar Wilde.

Chesterton often makes his points by playing on well-known proverbs, aphorisms, and popular sayings to reverse expectations and question accepted truths. This is equivalent, conceptually speaking, with Wilde’s inversions of logic that end up as paradoxical exceptions to the rule, stylistically highlighting what is true (for example, the Wilde-ism “Life is far too important a thing to ever talk seriously about”). His novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, to give one example, is stuffed with such truths arrived at through reversals, showing that certain expressions, intended as truisms, actually defy common sense or life as it’s lived by any wakeful person.

Not that Chesterton uses his characters’ dialogue in the same way; the contradictions and cheated expectations work to deepen the structure of the mystery. One ploy being used is that the mystification quotient of the events seems to suggest supernatural agency. Since, in terms of normal perception, the weird characters—human and non-human—and apparent invisibility of the laughing stalker and murderer are “unexplainable,” for the sake of the tale, they can only be explained by that which is by definition impossible, thus providing no explanation. The victims of the plot veer toward superstition as a reaction when other possibilities for clarity come up short.

Perhaps this is underscored by the story’s investigative brain-trust. Father Brown is himself so plain and modest as to be virtually invisible. He is unassuming and dramatically low-impact. As a cleric, he may have his head in the clouds, but he’s well-acquainted with the man in the street. The private investigator, Flambeau, is a recurring foil in the Father Brown canon. Flambeau is French for “flame,” which suits the image of this former criminal mastermind; a “flambeau” is a parade torch, meant to illuminate the darkness. So much for his efforts here. In “The Invisible Man,” it’s the humble, bloodhound-like Father Brown who arrives at the mystery’s solution.

Another odd facet of the tale are Smythe’s robotic inventions, idealized yet impersonal semi-human things. These alone are weird enough to warrant a greater role in the outcome of the mystery but function as red herrings, or as a false pivot for the developing events. (This work is similar to any number of genre tales in which a character on the defensive side is murdered during a case, after the primary detective has already been engaged.) While Britain’s manufacturing and agricultural equipment was certainly state of the art after the Industrial Revolution, it would not be until the 1920s that even the concept of the robot was introduced in science fiction, let alone in actuality. In Chesterton’s day, mechanical men would more likely be represented in reality by the automaton, a clockwork decoration or plaything designed to use levers and gears to enact a routine. This was no AI situation: any stunt, like the example of a chess-playing automaton, needed direct—if disguised—human intervention.