A review by judyward
The Old Man in the Corner by Baroness Orczy, Baroness Orczy

3.0

Unfortunately, I'm still stuck in the classic mystery genre. I was trying to free myself from this addiction when I chanced upon this book of short stories first published in 1909. Ellery Queen called The Old Man in the Corner the "first and greatest armchair detectives" and upon reading that I was hooked. In this series of stories, an odd old man in a tea shop talks to Polly Burton, a young reporter, about cold case crimes while methodically tying and untying intricate knots in a piece of string. Relying on logic to unravel unsolved crimes, the old man always seems to be on the side of the criminal. And the cause for that becomes clear in the last story. A fun read.