The Poet and the Lunatics is collection of short mystery stories by G. K. Chesterton, revolving around the adventures of one Gabriel Gale.
A professional painter and amateur student of lunacy, Gabriel occasionally finds himself useful to the police in the latter capacity when the motives of madmen are beyond the capacity of the police to solve.
It is in the public domain and can be read here
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Tropes appearing in this series include:
- Hollywood Atheist: The antagonist of "The House Of The Peacock", who has grown so obsessed with defying superstitions that he eventually went completely mad and slit a man's throat in terror when that man threatened to even once act in accordance with superstition.
- The Horseshoe Effect: In "The House Of The Peacock", the antagonist is a man who has built his life around acting directly contrary to every superstition he can think of. Gabriel notes that this man is just as ruled by superstition as the rustic yokel who obeys every superstition he knows.
- Insanity Defense: The antagonist in the last story turns out to be a corrupt doctor who runs a crime ring out of his insane asylum, letting his minions "escape" when he has errands for them to run. When captured, they cannot be charged with crimes and are simply returned to him.
- Police Are Useless: Downplayed. The police are quite capable of solving crimes (or apparent crimes) that are committed for sensible reasons. It's when the reasons behind the crime make no sense that they encounter problems and need to call in a specialist in nonsense.
- Success Through Insanity: Gabriel in a nutshell. His entire value to the police is that he is just crazy enough to guess at the motives of madmen, and just sane enough to explain those motives to the police.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Justified. Gabriel is not a detective by trade, but a painter, and as such only has reason to get involved if the crime happens to intersect with his interest in madmen.
- You Have to Believe Me!: Comes up near the end of the second story. Gabriel Gale has just realized that his host is dangerously mad and may very likely decide to blow up himself and all his guests at any moment, but he is well aware that this realization comes entirely through his insight into the man's psychology and that if he tried to explain the evidence and his reasoning to the other guests it would sound like complete nonsense. Fortunately, he is able to push them into leaving the madman's house by sheer force of personality, and when the man blows himself up Gabriel and the other guests have gotten just far enough away to survive.
