My Work for Gilbert! Magazine

 My Work for Gilbert! Magazine

 

One of my hobbies is promoting the work of underappreciated authors that I really enjoy.  I first discovered G.K. Chesterton’s work in seventh grade.  At the time, I was in the process of becoming a really big fan of Golden Age Mysteries.  I started reading Agatha Christie’s books in January of fifth grade, and by September of seventh grade I’d read all of her mystery novels.  I had a problem.  I wanted to read more books like hers, but I found all of the contemporary mysteries I’d read to be disappointing– too dark, too violent, too nihilistic, and not enough fair play for armchair sleuths.

 

So I looked at Christie’s short story collection Partners in Crime, where her husband and wife team Tommy and Tuppence investigate cases by imitating their favorite fictional detectives.  I decided to track some of them down.  I’d already read and loved all of Sherlock Holmes years earlier.  Most of the other detectives parodied in the book were out of print, but on a trip to Barnes & Noble, I found a copy of The Complete Father Brown, by G.K. Chesterton.  I got it, and read it over Spring Break of seventh grade.

 

By the end of the first story, “The Blue Cross,” I knew I’d found a winner.  I read through the anthology in a matter of days and was crushed that there weren’t more Father Brown stories.  I tried to find more of Chesterton’s work, but at the time most of his work was out of print.  I found a few of his books here and there, and ordered some Dover editions of some mysteries from Schwartz’s, my local bookstore, and those books cemented my appreciation for Chesterton.  

 

Years passed, and I found myself in college.  One evening sophomore year, I was tired and surfing the Internet, and decided to do searches for my favorite authors.  I eventually tried Chesterton and discovered The American Chesterton Society and their magazine Gilbert!  I really enjoyed the online articles, and in the middle of my senior year, I corresponded with the President of the ACS, Dale Ahlquist.  I’ll talk about what happened next in an upcoming post.

 

 

–Chris Chan

 

Chris Chan’s first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” was released on August 27^thfrom MX Publishing, and is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there).  It is also available in a Kindle edition.