The Old Man In the Corner

Created by Baroness Orczy, author of the famous Scarlet Pimpernel series, The Old Man In the Corner was one of the earliest armchair detectives, popping up with so many others in the wake of the huge popularity of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

This is one of three books of short stories featuring Bill Owen, Orczy's armchair detective, and although published after The Case of Miss Elliot it is first chronologically. The last book in the series is Unravelled Knots. The character of The Old Man had first appeared in a series of short stories collectively entitled "The Mysteries of Great Cities", appearing in the The Royal Magazine from April to October 1902, some of which were reprinted in the two subsequent collections.

The Old Man relies mostly upon sensationalistic "penny dreadful" newspaper accounts, with the occasional courtroom visit. He narrates all this information, while tying complicated knots in a piece of string, to Polly Burton, a female Journalist who frequents the same tea-shop (the ABC Teashop on the corner of Norfolk Street and the Strand).

They enjoy an antagonistic relationship, as the Journalist attempts to cut the Old Man's ego down to size and the Old Man trumps her every time.

The mysteries themselves are pretty typical of Edwardian crime fiction, resting on a solid foundation of unhappy marriages and the inequitable division of family property. Other aspects of the time are illustrated by a murder in the London underground system; murder of a female doctor; and two cases involving artists living in "bohemian" lodgings.

Another new and noteworthy feature of these cases: no one is ever brought to justice, and in fact most of the villains cannot be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

— Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.