Book Review - The Old Man in the Corner: The Teahouse Detective

The Old Man in the Corner:  The Teahouse Detective (Volume 1)
Author:  Baroness Orczy
Publisher:  Pushkin Press
Publication Date:  June 11, 2019
3 Stars

One day while sitting in the ABC Teashop, Polly Burton, a young reporter for the Evening Observer, is suddenly joined, uninvited, by an old man.  She immediately disliked him, and became perturbed by him when he said, “Mysteries!  There is no such thing as a mystery in connection with any crime, provided intelligence is brought to bear upon its investigation.”  So began an interesting relationship between Polly and the Old Man.  The Old Man turned out to be an amateur detective of sorts, and Polly became enraptured by his tales and  looked forward to their next meetings.  These meetings were always by chance, and each time, the Old Man related a mystery that had yet to be solved.  He went through each case step by step and explained where the police had misstepped, and then he revealed the true solution.

This book is a collection of short mystery stories.  Each tale told is a stand alone mystery with new characters involved in each one.  I thought the stories were perfect bedtime reading.  They provided light, short mysteries that each had an interesting twist, but weren’t the type of plots to keep you up at night.  I enjoyed the logic enfolded in each tale, even if some of them were fairly easy to solve.  I did find one of the stories difficult to follow, but most were pretty good.  There is a second Teahouse Detective novel, The Case of Miss Elliot, that I plan to give a try.

Thanks to Net Galley and Pushkin Press for an ARC of this book.  #TheOldManInTheCornerTheTeahouseDetetive  #NetGalley