Solitaire Book Club: The Man Who Was Thursday

The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. If you are familiar with the cult classic TV series The Prisoner, you know it was a smart, stylish, suspenseful spy saga for 16 episodes and then either a deeply symbolic story or an incoherent acid trip for its last installment.

The Man Who Was Thursday is a lot like that.

It starts out as a detective thriller, with threads of social commentary, as a police officer infiltrates a cabal of anarchists, and the story gets more and more outrageous until it seems to become farce, but then it takes a very dark turn, and finally is maddeningly opaque at the close of the narrative. No wonder Chesterton subtitled the book A Nightmare.

And yet, the story pulls the reader along without let-up -- I never considered not finishing it, as lost as I might be.

I am not sure why I added this to my list -- I heard someone say something about it somewhere, as I recall -- but I am glad I did.