The Old Man concentrates mostly upon sensationalistic newspaper accounts, with the occasional courtroom visit, and relates all this while tying complicated knots in a piece of string.

The plots themselves are typical of Edwardian crime fiction, resting on a foundation of unhappy marriages and the inequitable division of family property.

The final story reveals that the Old Man himself is a criminal, due to some of his trademark knotted rope being found at crime scene, and thereby implies that he may be the mysterious "Bill Owen" the police are unable to locate.

The stories included in this volume are: The Old Man in the Corner was featured in a series of twelve British two-reel silent films, made by Stoll Pictures in 1924, written and directed by Hugh Croise and starring Rolf Leslie as The Old Man and Renee Wakefield as journalist Mary Hatley (Polly Burton in the book).

These featured mysteries from each of the three collections: In the early 1970s Thames TV presented The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes based on the anthologies by Hugh Greene.