{"product_id":"2940149663095","title":"The Flying Stars (Father Brown Mystery Short Story)","description":"\"The most beautiful crime I ever committed,\" Flambeau would say in his highly moral old age, \"was also, by a singular coincidence, my last. It was committed at Christmas. As an artist I had always attempted to provide crimes suitable to the special season or landscapes in which I found myself, choosing this or that terrace or garden for a catastrophe, as if for a statuary group. Thus squires should be swindled in long rooms panelled with oak; while Jews, on the other hand, should rather find themselves unexpectedly penniless among the lights and screens of the Cafe Riche. Thus, in England, if I wished to relieve a dean of his riches (which is not so easy as you might suppose), I wished to frame him, if I make myself clear, in the green lawns and grey towers of some cathedral town. Similarly, in France, when I had got money out of a rich and wicked peasant (which is almost impossible), it gratified me to get his indignant head relieved against a grey line of clipped poplars, and those solemn plains of Gaul over which broods the mighty spirit of Millet. \u003cbr\u003e\"Well, my last crime was a Christmas crime, a cheery, cosy, English middle-class crime; a crime of Charles Dickens. I did it in a good old middle-class house near Putney, a house with a crescent of carriage drive, a house with a stable by the side of it, a house with the name on the two outer gates, a house with a monkey tree. Enough, you know the species. I really think my imitation of Dickens's style was dexterous and literary. It seems almost a pity I repented the same evening.\" \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Starling and Black","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47167808209136,"sku":"2940149663095","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940149663095_p0.jpg?v=1763721428","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940149663095","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}