The Old Man in the Corner: Twelve Classic Detective Stories (Dover Literature: Crime/Mystery/Thriller Short Stories)

Very Sherlock Holmesian set of murder mysteries, solved by a fidgety old man in a tea shop and told to a woman journalist. One of those murders may have been committed by the storyteller himself.

A nice collection of "armchair detective" stories, featuring the original armchair detective.

I got this for my niece, she loves mystery books. This was a huge hit for her! Really good story line for younger kids!

Although I've read several of the stories in anthologies, it's good to have the whole collection. I'm an enthusiast for, and collector of, what are generally classed as Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, and these are good examples of The Amateur Bystander and Problem Solver. Baroness Orczy is of course known best for The Scarlet Pimpernel,but I really enjoy these examples of her detective stories. I'm also looking forward to getting the collection of Lady Molly in the near future. I recommend the stories to any fans of early crime writing.

Interesting collection of the Old Man In The Corner short stories. Good preface to explain the background of the writer.

The stories are in the wrong order. "The Mysterious Death in Percy Street" must come last.

Great book. Love the stories. If you want something to read in short bursts this is the book to get.

THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER (1908) is Baroness Orczy's second collection of well written fair-play Puzzle stories featuring her strange little armchair amateur detective who drinks milk, eats cheesecake, and compulsively ties and unties complex knots in pieces of string. All twelve stories are cleverly constructed and offer readers the pleasure of trying to solve the cases before the Old Man in the Corner announces his own conclusions to the young female journalist who sits near him in a small London restaurant.Orczy originally published these stories in THE ROYAL MAGAZINE in two separate series--"The Mysteries of London" (1901; 6 stories) and "The Mysteries of Great Cities" (1902; 7 stories--with "The Glasgow Mystery" NOT being reprinted in any of her books because it contained an error pertaining to Scottish law). While putting together THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER, Baroness Orczy revised her stories somewhat, transforming first-person narratives into third-person ones, giving names to her two main characters, and providing a fuller background (and a fiancé) for the female journalist, who originally had been the narrator; further, Orczy re-arranged the sequence of her stories, retitled two of them, and gave 36 "chapter titles" to them and their sub-parts so that the book would appear to be an episodic novel (this was a common marketing ploy, since publishers had found that novels usually sold better than collections of short stories did).In order of their final sequence, the dozen stories are "The Fenchurch Street Mystery" (a murder case), "The Robbery in Phillimore Terrace" (involving diamonds and cash), "The York Mystery" (murder), "The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railway" (murder again), "The Liverpool Mystery" (theft of cash), "The Edinburgh Mystery" (theft of jewelry and apparently murder), "The Theft at the English Provident Bank" (theft of cash again), "The Dublin Mystery" (a forged will and murder), "An Unparalleled Outrage" (a blackmail case; originally titled "The Brighton Mystery"), "The Regent's Park Murder" (the murder of a successful gambler; first published in Sep. 1901, but reset in Feb. 1907), "The De Genneville Peerage" (murder yet again; originally titled "The Birmingham Mystery"), and "The Mysterious Death in Percy Street" (robbery and death by exposure to cold).The original magazine texts of six of these stories can be read in the anthology RIVALS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (Castle Books, 1978), edited by Alan K. Russell, and the original texts of three more can be found in THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER (Dover, 1980), edited by E. F. Bleiler (which is NOT a reprint of the 1909 collection). Both of these books reprint "The Glasgow Mystery," which Orczy never republished.By the way (as many people have pointed out), a small mystery exists about the sequencing of the publication of Orczy's first two old-man-in-the-corner books. Following the magazine publication of her first two series of such stories in 1901 and 1902, Baroness Orczy published twelve more of these stories in THE ROYAL MAGAZINE in 1904-05. Orczy then collected the third series in a book titled THE CASE OF MISS ELLIOTT (1905). Finally, four years later, she published her collection of twelve of the first two series (revised as indicated) as THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER (1908; the first U.S. edition [New York: Dodd Mead, 1909] omitted the word "Old" from the title).Perhaps the solution to that sequencing puzzle centers around the fact that the sixth story to appear in magazine form--"The Mysterious Death in Percy Street" (Oct. 1901)--originally was intended to END the entire series with the old man leaving the restaurant and never being seen again. It seems "logical" that Baroness Orczy, after yielding to pressure to write the two additional series (1902 and 1904-05), would wish to place that "final" mystery (which has a rather shocking, totally different sort of solution) as the concluding story in her second and (as she then, mistakenly, assumed) LAST collection of such works.Like many other authors, Orczy has several favorite plot tricks that she likes to recycle from time to time. If you read more of her collections of short mysteries--including THE CASE OF MISS ELLIOTT, LADY MOLLY OF SCOTLAND YARD, SKIN O' MY TOOTH, and UNRAVELLED KNOTS (a third collection of old-man-in-the-corner stories, published in 1924 and 1925)--expect to see this. For me, this has not decreased the enjoyment of her stories; rather, I found added pleasure detecting and observing how she was able to make some old trick work in a whole new context.

read this book over and over again

Deux étoiles et demie pour ce que je n'aime pas beaucoup ce livre mais ne le déteste pas non plus.Il ne faut surtout pas lire ce recueil dans la foulée. On y découvrirait un shéma qui ne change guère d'une nouvelle à l'autre.Les protagonistes n'ont guère d'épaisseur ni de peps si on les compare à ceux de Sir Arthur.Malgré tout, "The Old Man in the Corner" reste une pierre blanche dans le jardin des littératures policières et tout amateur éclairé se doit de le lire.