"Gabriel Syme was not merely a detective who pretended to be a poet; he was really a poet who had become a detective. Nor was his hatred of anarchy hypocritical. He was one of those who are driven early in life into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most revolutionists. He had not attained it by any tame tradition. His respectability was spontaneous and sudden, a rebellion against rebellion. He came of a family of cranks, in which all the oldest people had all the newest notions. The more his mother preached a more than Puritan abstinence the more did his father expand into a more than pagan latitude; and by the time the former had come to enforcing vegetarianism, the latter had pretty well reached the point of defending cannibalism.
Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left—sanity."
G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who was Thursday
Li este livro há um tempo atrás e acabou virando um dos meus favoritos. A história se passa em Londres, na virada do século XIX para o século XX, em que um detetivo da Scontland Yard (Grabiel Syme) aparenta ser um anarquista.
Logo no começo o livro tem uma virada brilhante!
Chesterton é um daqueles (poucos) autores que odeia clichês (e adoro ele por causa disso). Enquanto que o herói é um conservador, o vilão é um liberal maluco. Outras histórias de mistério clássicas de Chesterton têm Father Brown, um padre, como protagonista. O conto "The Invisible Man" foi um dos melhores que já li até hoje nesse gênero.
Ainda procuro mais autores que sejam tão bons e engraçados como Chesterton.
