The Old Man in the Corner: Volume 1 (The Teahouse Detective)

by Baroness Orczy

Mysteries! There is no such thing as a mystery in connection with any crime, provided intelligence is brought to bear upon its investigation.

So says a rather down-at-heel elderly gentleman to young Polly Burton of the Evening Observer, in the corner of the ABC teashop on Norfolk Street one afternoon. Once she has forgiven him for distracting her from her newspaper and luncheon, Miss Burton discovers that her interlocutor is as brilliantly gifted as he is eccentric - able to solve mysteries that have made headlines and baffled the finest minds of the police without once leaving his seat in the teahouse. As the weeks go by, she listens to him unravelling the trickiest of puzzles and solving the most notorious of crimes, but still one final mystery remains: the mystery of the old man in the corner himself.

The Old Man in the Corner is a classic collection of mysteries featuring the Teahouse Detective - a contemporary of Sherlock Holmes, with a brilliant mind and waspish temperament to match that of Conan Doyle's creation.

• ISBN10: 1782275231
• ISBN13: 9781782275237
• Publish Date: 15 November 2018
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 30 November 2023
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Steerforth Press
• Imprint: Pushkin Vertigo
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 288
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781782275237

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Teahouse Detective: The Old Man in the Corner is the first of two anthologies of short stories featuring the Teahouse Detective by Baroness Orczy, the author of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Originally published in 1908, this reformatting and re-release from Pushkin is due out 11th June 2019, and is 288 pages. There are 36 short vignettes included in this collection. They're presented as intellectual exercises, pas de deux between the eccentric old man and reporter Polly Burton, the denouements are not presented to the police.

These are cleverly constructed mysteries. Some of them are somewhat transparent, but I really think that's because so many of the literary devices she employed have been copied and reused since then that modern readers are familiar with the twists.

This would make a superlative commute read. The vignettes are all under 15 pages in length and could be read during free moments here and there. They're all well written and a lot of fun to read.

Four stars. I'm very happy that Pushkin is preserving and presenting these gems to new generations of readers.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.