Four Max Carrados Detective Stories by Ernest Bramah

 


George Orwell acknowledged the influence of an Ernest Bramah novel on 1984 and maintained that Bramah's Max Carrados stories were, along with the Sherlock Holmes stories and R. Austin Freeman's Dr Thorndyke stories, the only detective stories since Edgar Allan Poe worth reading. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but the Carrados stories, or at least the four of them collected in this short volume, are fun, though nothing like as good as the Holmes stories. Bramah follows Doyle in that his detective, Max Carrados, is a genius, and has as his foil a partner who is, well, not a genius. Bramah's departure from the Holmes formula is that his genius detective is blind, the twist being that even though he is unable to see, he is astoundingly perceptive. 

Will I read more Max Carrados stories (free from Guttenberg)?

We'll see.


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