Welcome to Litsy!

A classic collection of mysteries from the Golden Age of British crime writing, by the author of The Scarlet Pimpernel 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 the old man is as brilliantly gifted as he is eccentric – able to solve mysteries that have baffled the finest minds of the police over a cup of tea. As the weeks go by, Miss Burton listens to him unravelling the trickiest of puzzles and shedding light on the most notorious of crimes, but still one final mystery remains: the mystery of the old man in the corner himself. Baroness Orczy (1865–1947) was a Hungarian-born British author, best known for her Scarlet Pimpernel novels. Her Teahouse Detective, who features in The Old Man in the Corner, was one of the first fictional sleuths created in response to the Sherlock Holmes stories' huge success. Initially serialised in magazines, the stories in this collection were first published in book form in 1908 and have since been adapted for radio, television and film. Two more collections of Teahouse Detective mysteries are forthcoming from Pushkin Vertigo.