The Old Man in the Corner: The Teahouse Detective

This review was originally posted on my blog Trails of Tales.
Top of the morning Ladies and Gents of the bookish posse!

It is Time

Time to dust off your Time Machines.

Because we are going on a ride

To Britain, 1900’s.

When Baroness Orczy, a Hungarian born British author conjures through her magical pen an armchair detective ‘The Old Man in the Corner’ in the Teahouse Detective

Now being brought to us in 2019 by the good people at Pushkin Vertigo.

The Teahouse Detective originated as serialized magazine stories which were then compiled in a book for the first time in 1908.

Did you know Baroness Orczy created The Teahouse Detective as a response to the Sherlock Holmes craze?

Yours truly here is a big fat Sherlock fan.

But I am still going to say this

Take a back seat Sherlock

This Old man has much more sass than you could ever muster.

And that is saying a lot!

We see the Old man in the corner, I’ll call him Corner King from now on, through the eyes of Polly Burton, journalist at the Evening Observer.

(Yes I know, Corner King…not the most creative of names. There’s a reason I am not Baroness Orczy!)

One fine day, in the A.B.C Teashop on Norfolk street,Polly was reading her newspaper at her usual corner, minding her own buisness.

When out of nowhere an old man slides into the seat opposite her.

Good Heavens!

Well I never…

How rude of you Sir!

Polly looks up from her newspaper with, what I believe is her best hell-hath-no-fury eyes and is greeted by the sight of Corner King.

She kindly describes him as the palest, thinnest, balding nervous old man with a birdlike head and resembling an old scarecrow.

Hardly someone you would peg as a sleuth.

But then

Without any kind of preamble Corner King delves into dissecting the most mysterious crimes of the British society.

Not just analysing or discussing, but solving them!
Right there, in the corner seat of the Teashop.

He lays down all the dead ends of an unsolvable case in front of Polly.

And starts to unravel them one by one, until he presents a conclusion clear as day.

Polly Burton, being a journalist knows that what the Corner King has is only a theory.
Where is the proof? The facts?

Inspite of that, Polly cannot help but admit that he had just cracked the case wide open.

While he does all of that, Polly notices Corner King constantly fidgeting with what he calls an ‘adjunct to thought’. A piece of string that

He ties into unfathomable precise knots

And then unknots them.

That process continues in circles for the whole duration of the conversation.

Knot. Unknot. Repeat.

From here, we turn the pages to find a treasure trove of mysteries. Each one more stupendous and breathtaking than the other.

My bookish heart/brain profusely thanks Pushkin Vertigo for compiling these beautiful enigmas and bringing them to us because I had no idea about the existence of Baroness Orczy and her works.

A fact I am kicking myself for by bending my leg at freakish angles.

Ah well…we have this saying in Hindi

“Der aaye, durust aaye“

Which, roughly translated means

Better late than never.

Since Baroness Orczy created ‘The Old Man in the Corner’ in the 1900’s, the beautiful British English of that time immediately shifts you to a world of the past. And I for one, find myself feeling warm and comfortable.

There is something about all fiction that enlivens the past gone by. Perhaps because it is a bridge between fantasy and reality?

Our Corner King character puzzles me with his sarcastic smiles. He is innately made up of contradictions:

° An evident possessor of nervous disposition yet extremely self assured of his deductions to the point of being smug.

° Does not want to be actually involved in solving a crime still does make enough efforts to take pictures of the crime scenes from afar and attends all court hearings just to observe the people involved in the crime.

And the biggest contradiction of all…

° Insists since the beginning that there are no such things as mysteries. You only have to view the crime intelligently ( Which he does and the police obviously does not)

But the mystery still remains

Who IS the Old Man in the Corner?

More often than not, in a collection of stories you can sift between the stories you like more than others.

But not here.

Every single story shines on it own. Baroness Orczy had created gems of story-telling and I was completely oblivious to them before. Fortunately, that grave folly of mine is rectified.

However I would tell you this

The last story…..

Nothing

I repeat

Nothing can prepare you for that

It’s…well… it’s…well….ah….words….

Just read the stories!!!

This is the third time I have read this book, and with each time, comes the satisfaction of reading a book that is well written. I love the fact that one can delving into many well constructed puzzles, and come to the end of the story with all the " of course" flash answers.
All short with brief abrupt endings which lead to a story within these stories. If you enjoy the old style mysteries you will enjoy this book.

One lunch time, Polly Burton is disturbed from her usual routine by a strange old man sitting down at her table. He proceeds to talk about a recent murder case which has puzzled police and remained unsolved. After laying out the facts, the old man shows Polly how the murder was actually committed and by whom. Over the coming weeks, Polly regularly meets the old man to discuss other unsolved mysteries, each time providing evidence to support his solution to the crime.
Having grown up reading the Scarlet Pimpernel adventures, I was intrigued to discover that Baroness Orczy had also written these detective stories. They are a fascinating read, and the settings and description give an insight into the life of Britain around the beginning of the 20th century. Each mystery is quite short, and so a book that is easy to dip in and out of.
Similar in style to other books of this era, it is worth a read by all fans of Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.

This book is a collection of short story mysteries that was originally published in 1901. Those short stories are framed around the amateur detective telling a reporter about his solution to various mysteries (not only murders) which baffle the police. He investigates the details and attends the trials, but he doesn't give the solutions to the police because he admires the cleverness of these criminals. He wants to brag to someone, though, so he tells the reporter in the teashop the details of the case, the clues, and his solution. She never passes on the information.

These were clue-based puzzle mysteries. There were enough clues that the reader can guess his solution, especially since the clues were more obvious due to the shorter format. I correctly guessed the whodunit and how for all but one mystery. That one story was somewhat confusing, so I'm not sure that my solution didn't work as well as his. Anyway, it was fun to read and guess the solutions. There was no sex or bad language. Overall, I'd recommend this collection to fans of puzzle mysteries.

Thanks to netgalley for an early copy in return for an honest review What a fantastic book pure nostalgia at its best can highly recommend this book to family and friends

Short stories of intriguing little puzzles told in a gentle style. Apparently there are more to be published - a delight to look forward to.

The Old Man in the Corner: The Teahouse Detective by Baroness Orczy. Very reminiscent of Agatha Christie's the Man in the Brown Suit. Someone who is not a detective but has keen insight into the problems that are brought before him and those that he follows. Almost as good as The Scarlet Pimpernel.

I received this book via Netgalley and the publisher, in return for an honest review. This is a rerelease of a set of classic mystery short stories from 1908 by Baroness Orczy. There are 12 stories, told by a strange old man to a young woman he encounters in a teashop. Her function is to serve as the audience for each of the well-known but unsolved mysteries that he tells. The stories range from interesting to ‘easy to spot the murderer’. The narrative style reflects the era and some comments or descriptions are not acceptable in the modern day but don’t, overall, detract from reading the stories. Easy reading style; if you like stories from the Sherlock Holmes era, these will be a decent supplement to your collection.

Just think Victorian Murder She Wrote but it's even more than that. Yes it's a type of spin on sleuthing in part, from a woman's perspective or point of view but, it's also another way of looking at how women were usually regulated to small parts in anything and were able to counteract prevailing thought about the so call weaker sex. I'm looking forward to reading the other volumes.

Interesting collection of short mysteries by Baroness Orczy, who also wrote the Scarlet Pimpernel. This is a reprint of stories written in the early 1900’s and the prose reflects the British culture of that period. The mysteries are rather well done, and the length make them easily accessible on short notice for a quick diversion.
The relationship between the Old Man in the Corner (aka the Teahouse Detective) and Miss Polly Burton is an especially entertaining part of each read. A small treasure in the history of mystery fiction.

This set of short stories by Baroness Orczy (1865 – 1947) were published in magazines in the early 1900s and were first gathered into a book in 1908. They are still very readable today, over 110 years later.

The book contains 12 short stories, each split into 3-4 chapters. In each one, the old man in the corner of the tearoom outlines a murder that has baffled the public and the police-force – but not him, obviously! The stories are intriguing but the clues are given and the reader usually has enough material to reach the same conclusion if they pay enough attention and think hard enough.

The stories are from the same late Victorian / early Edwardian London that Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson walked and the atmosphere (often foggy!) is identical: omnibuses; the newish Underground railway; cabs; and the social strata. If you enjoyed Conan Doyle’s short stories, you will enjoy these.

#TheOldManInTheCornerTheTeahouseDetective #NetGalley

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.

While lunching at the A.B.C. Shop, an old man sitting in the corner strikes up a conversation with reporter Polly Burton. Over time he narrates twelve mysteries which have confounded the police and offers his solutions.
An enjoyable, varied selection of short stories, each one easily read in fifteen minutes which were first published in 1908.

These are utterly delightful small 'puzzle mysteries.' Like the Poirot short stories or some of the Sherlock tales, these little mysteries become perfectly clear when the old man explains them.

I am an avid mystery reader. The entire genre as it exists today (in my humble opinion) would not exist if it were not for the works of Dame Agatha Christie, and the wonderful Baroness Orczy.

In The Old Man in the Corner: The Teahouse Detective, there are twelve stories of mystery and intrigue written by Emmuska Orczy, Each story features the mysterious old man that sits in the corner of the ABC tea shop and engaged in a series of conversations with a delightful journalist. What follows are tales of intrigue and mystery. This book is perfect for fans of older British detective/mystery fiction.