![]() First edition cover | |
Author | Baroness Orczy |
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Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Genre | Detective fiction |
Publisher | Hutchinson & Co |
Publication date | 1925 |
Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
Pages | 303 |
Preceded by | The Case of Miss Elliott |
Unravelled Knots, by Baroness Orczy, author of the Scarlet Pimpernel series, contains thirteen short stories about the Old Man in the Corner, Orzy's armchair detective who solves crimes for his own entertainment. [1] This is the last of three books of short stories featuring the detective and follows those in The Old Man in the Corner and The Case of Miss Elliott .
In these first person narratives, a woman, presumably the Polly Burton of The Old Man in the Corner , visits a tea-house after an absence of twenty years to find the Man in the Corner just as she had last seen him years before, fidgeting with his string and with mysteries to unravel. She is fascinated by the unlikely unraveling 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.
Seven of these stories originally appeared in the London Magazine (1923–1924) and five in Hutchinson's Magazine (1924–1925). [2]
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.
Baroness Emma Orczy, usually known as Baroness Orczy or to her family and friends as Emmuska Orczy, was a Hungarian-born British novelist and playwright. She is best known for her series of novels featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel, the alter ego of Sir Percy Blakeney, a wealthy English fop who turns into a quick-thinking escape artist in order to save French aristocrats from "Madame Guillotine" during the French Revolution, establishing the "hero with a secret identity" in popular culture.
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The Case of Miss Elliott was Baroness Orczy's first collection of detective stories. It appeared in 1905 and featured the first of her detective characters, The Old Man in the Corner, who solves mysteries without leaving his chair.
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