The Man Who Knew Too Much and other stories (1922) is a book of detective stories by English writer G. K. Chesterton, published in 1922 by Cassell and Company in the United Kingdom, and Harper Brothers in the United States. The book contains eight connected short stories about "The Man Who Knew Too Much", and additional unconnected stories featuring separate heroes/detectives. The United States edition contained one of these additional stories: "The Trees of Pride", while the United Kingdom edition contained "Trees of Pride" and three more, shorter stories: "The Garden of Smoke", "The Five of Swords" and "The Tower of Treason".

This contains the first 8 of the 12 stories in the published book The Man Who Knew Too Much and Other Stories. In these 8 detective thrillers, the main protagonist is Horne Fisher. (The omitted four are individual stories with separate heroes/detectives.)

Due to close relationships with the leading political figures in the land, Fisher knows too much about the private politics behind the public politics of the day. This knowledge is a burden to him because he is able to uncover the injustices and corruptions of the murders in each story, but in most cases the real killer gets away with the killing because to bring him openly to justice would create a greater chaos: starting a war, reinciting Irish rebellions, or removing public faith in the government.

A film of the same title was made in 1934 and remade in 1956, both directed by Alfred Hitchcock, but the films had nothing at all in common (except the title) with these short stories. Hitchcock decided to use the title simply because he had the rights for some of the stories.

(Reference: Wikipedia)THEFACE IN THE TARGET (Excerpt)

HAROLD MARCH, the rising reviewer and socialcritic, was walking vigorously across a great tableland of moors andcommons, the horizon of which was fringed with the far-off woods ofthe famous estate of Torwood Park. He was a good-looking young man intweeds, with very pale curly hair and pale clear eyes. Walking inwind and sun in the very landscape of liberty, he was still youngenough to remember his politics and not merely try to forget them.For his errand at Torwood Park was a political one; it was the placeof appointment named by no less a person than the Chancellor of theExchequer, Sir Howard Horne, then introducing his so-called Socialistbudget, and prepared to expound it in an interview with so promisinga penman. Harold March was the sort of man who knows everything aboutpolitics, and nothing about politicians. He also knew a great dealabout art, letters, philosophy, and general culture; about almosteverything, indeed, except the world he was living in.

Abruptly, in the middle of those sunny and windyflats, he came upon a sort of cleft almost narrow enough to be calleda crack in the land. It was just large enough to be the water-coursefor a small stream which vanished at intervals under green tunnels ofundergrowth, as if in a dwarfish forest. Indeed, he had an oddfeeling as if he were a giant looking over the valley of the pygmies.When he dropped into the hollow, however, the impression was lost;the rocky banks, though hardly above the height of a cottage, hungover and had the...