"Unravelled Knots," by Baroness Orczy, writer of the Scarlet Pimpernel series, includes 13 stories about the Old Man in the Corner, Orzy's armchair detective who solves crimes for his very own entertainment. This is the last of 3 books of short stories featuring the detective and follows those in The Old Man in the Corner and The Case of Miss Elliott.
Written in the first person narrative, a woman, Polly Burton of The Old Man in the Corner, visits a tea-house after a leaving two decades earlier, only to discover the Man in the Corner still fidgeting together his strings of mysteries to unravel. She is curious about the ongoing unravelings she hears, but despite her sarcasm and pride in her own investigative talents she remains the learner, impressed in spite of herself. The book is also notable for the development of the Old Man himself as a character; while in previous books he would simply extoll the genius of a criminal who outwitted the police while never lifting a finger to bring them to justice, here he occasionally recommends that his listener publish his writings (whenever the circumstances will protect her from a libel suit), or references having notified the police about a conclusion.
From "The Bookman" - Volume 62, 1926:
...now we have UNRAVELLED KNOTS by Baroness Orczy, stories of mystery and adventure whose untangling requires the work of an artist, and whose plots are constructed about a young fellow with a brilliant mind for such work — and a rather humorous exterior. He accomplishes no miracles, but works out these problems somewhat in the manner of Sherlock Holmes. Which reminds me that Frank L. Packard and J. S. Fletcher are preparing novels for later in the spring. --Alan Rinehart
