G K Chester­ton is best known for his series of quirky sto­ries about ama­teur sleuth and Roman Catholic priest, Father Brown. How­ev­er, it is his 1908 nov­el The Man Who Was Thurs­day which is for me his abid­ing mas­ter­piece, a piece of lit­er­a­ture I have returned to per­haps five or six times in order to recap­ture its deli­cious prose and oth­er­world­li­ness. I even put this old and won­der­ful­ly designed book cov­er onto a T‑shirt!

 At first glance, The Man Who Was Thurs­day is a sus­pense­ful mys­tery sto­ry, a thriller, but it soon becomes appar­ent that this is no mere detec­tive sto­ry; lit­tle is as it seems in this mys­tery, and we find our­selves in deep­er waters than expect­ed. The nov­el­’s sub­ti­tle offers us a clue to this: A Night­mare.

Gabriel Syme is a poet and a police detec­tive; Lucien Gre­go­ry, a poet and bomb-throw­ing anar­chist. At the begin­ning of the nov­el, Syme infil­trates a secret meet­ing of anar­chists and gets him­self elect­ed to it as “Thurs­day,” one of the sev­en mem­bers of the Cen­tral Anar­chist Coun­cil, in the sud­den full knowl­edge of a ham­strung and pet­ri­fied Gre­go­ry.

Syme soon learns, how­ev­er, that he is not the only one in dis­guise, and even as the masks come off, the biggest ques­tion – for both the read­er and the char­ac­ters – is who is Sun­day? What is the true iden­ti­ty of the larg­er than life char­ac­ter who is the supreme head of the anar­chists? The sto­ry unfolds thrilling­ly, and through­out it all we are treat­ed to Chesterton’s exu­ber­ant prose, clever dia­logue and grip­ping style. His wit shines through every scene.

Let’s read an exam­ple of this style, and how Chester­ton con­structs a creep­ing sense of jeop­ardy. Syme, the detec­tive who is dis­guised as a poet, has engaged the anar­chist Gre­go­ry and, on con­di­tion of hav­ing sworn him­self to absolute secre­cy, is tak­en to meet the high­ly dan­ger­ous anar­chist coun­cil. Just pri­or to the arrival of the rest of the anar­chists, Syme lets Gre­go­ry into his own secret…

“Gre­go­ry, I gave you a promise before I came into this place. That promise I would keep under red-hot pin­cers. Would you give me, for my own safe­ty, a lit­tle promise of the same kind?”

“A promise?” asked Gre­go­ry, won­der­ing.

“Yes,” said Syme, very seri­ous­ly, “a promise. I swore before God that I would not tell your secret to the police. Will you swear by Human­i­ty, or what­ev­er beast­ly thing you believe in, that you will not tell my secret to the anar­chists?”

“Your secret?” asked the star­ing Gre­go­ry. “Have you got a secret?”

“Yes,” said Syme, “I have a secret.” Then after a pause, “Will you swear?”

Gre­go­ry glared at him grave­ly for a few moments, and then said abrupt­ly—

“You must have bewitched me, but I feel a furi­ous curios­i­ty about you. Yes, I will swear not to tell the anar­chists any­thing you tell me. But look sharp, for they will be here in a cou­ple of min­utes.”

Syme rose slow­ly to his feet and thrust his long, white hands into his long, grey trousers’ pock­ets. Almost as he did so there came five knocks on the out­er grat­ing, pro­claim­ing the arrival of the first of the con­spir­a­tors.

“Well,” said Syme slow­ly, “I don’t know how to tell you the truth more short­ly than by say­ing that your expe­di­ent of dress­ing up as an aim­less poet is not con­fined to you or your Pres­i­dent. We have known the dodge for some time at Scot­land Yard.”

Gre­go­ry tried to spring up straight, but he swayed thrice.

“What do you say?” he asked in an inhu­man voice.

“Yes,” said Syme sim­ply, “I am a police detec­tive. But I think I hear your friends com­ing.”