The Eyes of Max Carrados

Max Carrados #1-3

by Ernest Bramah

Max Carrados is one of the most unusual detectives in all fiction. He is blind – and yet he has developed his other faculties to such an amazing degree that they more than compensate for his lack of sight.‘Lose one sense and the others, touch, taste, smell, hearing improve…with a little dedicated training.’ Carrados can read a newspaper headline with the touch of his fingers, detect a man wearing a false moustache because ‘he carries a five yard aura of spirit gum’ and shoot a villain by aiming at the sound of his beating heart.

Assisted by his sharp-eyed  manservant, Parker, Carrados is the mystery-solver par excellence. Here is a collection of the best of Max Carrados, a set of stories featuring a series of baffling puzzles to challenge the greatest of detectives. They are written by Ernest Bramah with great wit, style and panache. This is vintage crime fiction at its best.

Genres: Mystery, Short Stories, Classics, Fiction

688 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1923

About the author

Bramah was a reclusive soul, who shared few details of his private life with his reading public. His full name was Ernest Bramah Smith. It is known that he dropped out of Manchester Grammar School at the age of 16, after displaying poor aptitude as a student and thereafter went into farming, and began writing vignettes for the local newspaper. Bramah's father was a wealthy man who rose from factory hand to a very wealthy man in a short time, and who supported his son in his various career attempts.

Bramah went to Fleet Street after the farming failure and became a secretary to Jerome K. Jerome, rising to a position as editor of one of Jerome's magazines. At some point, he appears to have married Mattie.

More importantly, after being rejected by 8 publishers, the Wallet of Kai Lung was published in 1900, and to date, remains in print. Bramah wrote in different areas, including political science fiction, and mystery. He died at the age of 74. See http://www.ernestbramah.com for more information.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bit of a confusing one, this. There are two books called ‘The Eyes of Max Carrados’. The first is volume two of three of the collected Carrados short stories. The second is a collection of all three volumes. Goodreads seems not to differentiate between the two.

For the sake of clarity, I’m rating the former, not the latter.

The stories collected here are:

1. The Virginiola Fraud
2. The Disappearance of Mary Severe
3. The Secret of Dunstan’s Tower
4. The Mystery of the Poisoned Dish of Mushrooms
5. The Ghost at Massingham Mansions
6. The Missing Actress Sensation
7. The Ingenious Mr. Spinosa
8. The Kingsmith Spy Case
9. The Eastern Mystery

I’d give 3, 4, 5 7 and 9 five stars each and the rest four stars. Total score for the book: 4.5 stars rounded up to 5 because it’s nearly Christmas and I’m feeling generous.

[Bonnie Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really wonder what happened that this gem didn't gain as much fame as Sherlock Holmes. Intriguing, sometimes far-fetched (but so was Sherlock Holmes), innovative in a way, and curious. However, I may be so captivated by it because it feels like reading Sherlock Holmes. The same time period, the same methods (kind of, the main character is blind so he goes about some things in a slightly different and unique way), the same coolness of the main character, an official that needs help from an amateur... sounds all too familiar, yet that doesn't change the fact that these stories are ultra enjoyable and definitely not inferior to any other detective stories. Certainly better than Agatha Christie's detective stories. The one thing that vexes me is the lack of proper explanation at the end of each story. We learn the truth but how on earth a blind amateur detective managed to reach the truth is a mystery. We can see him taking quite reasonable actions but a few paragraphs later he's doing something quirky. No one knows why and no one questions it. Ok, Max keep your secrets. I don't mind it that much but it does no good to me and my rather slow brain.

Geez, Sherlock Holmes is really a masterpiece when it comes to deduction because at the end of each story there is a straightforward explanation, and everything makes complete sense.


I have the physical copy of this edition on my shelf and I have no regrets about buying it. The cover is creepy af but the contents make up for it. Much recommended to all the fans of the late Victorian era and detective stories.

[Jacob Heartstone · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of short mysteries involving the blind hobby detective Max Carrados was recommended to me as similar to the Sherlock Holmes books in content and vibes, and in that respect I was not disappointed (though, personally, I enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes cases more). Still, I definitely got a turn-of-the-century in Victorian/Edwardian England feeling, and the cases were similarly weird but entertaining to solve.

I also loved the idea of a blind detective and to follow him as he solves the cases in his very own way, which is what made this book intriguing to me even more. However, I did not entirely like the way the author dealt with his main character's diablity and how he utilized it in the cases presented in this volume. I kept wondering if the author had ever met a blind person in his life and often found his way of describing things in relation to his main character a bit awkward and ultimately not entirely believable.

Still, and even though it took me a while to really get into it, it's a nice and atmospheric read with for the most part suspenseful cases and some very interesting side characters, so I'd definitely recommend it.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

A low four stars, but it has nothing specifically wrong with it to take it down to three - except that the mysteries feel a bit soft. Most of them turn out not to be crimes at all, even the ones that start out looking as if they are. You could look at this as creativity and not being bound by the usual conventions of the genre.

They're not "fair play" stories, either, which the reader could work out from the information given. The blind detective has developed his other senses to a hard-to-believe degree, making him basically Daredevil, though in this volume he doesn't have to use his abilities to fight as he did in the first collection. He's also highly intelligent, so the entertainment is that you get to watch someone very clever solve unusual puzzles in an unusual way.

The last story, uncharacteristically, introduces a supernatural element. I didn't feel it was particularly successful. Still, they're enjoyably told and out of the ordinary, and on balance I enjoyed them.

[Davidg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume contains three books on the career of the blind amateur detective Max Carrados. He is a slightly unbelievable character, being able to read newsprint by touch. Once you accept his almost superhuman powers, some of the stories are odd. Not every mystery has to have a crime behind it, but seeing ghosts near electrical outlets because the substation is built on a plague put is decidedly odd.

2.5 stars but I'm being generous.

[Chris Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another Enjoyable Collection

More stories of Max Carrados the suave blind detective, his friend Carlyle, his “Manservant” Parkinson and Secretary Greatorex. Identified along with the stories of Holmes and Dr Thorndyke as one of the “only three series of detective stories worth rereading since Poe” by George Orwell the stories are easy to read and charming.
As with the first volume it is all about Carrados himself with the other characters playing much more minor roles than for example Watson with Holmes. Louis Carlyle holds some interest but I feel there was more that could have been made of him. As pointed out by another reader the very few female characters are almost all maids or wives, not even an Irene Adler type for Carrados to respect “despite” being a woman. I suppose this reflects the time the stories were written but does tend to date things.
I enjoyed this collection of short stories in a similar way to the first but I feel that my acquaintance with Max Carrados and his world is now sufficient and I won’t be reading anymore of this series for now. Four stars because with the passage of 100 years or so these stories have, at least for me, lost their original freshness.

[Manuel Alfonseca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Second book in the blind detective series. The same as with the first, I found something missing in this set of stories. Maybe it is the author's style, for me somewhat confusing. Or the subjects, which sometimes grate on me.

In the last story, Carrados and his friend exhibit their Church-of-England sense of superiority against Catholics, "those backwards superstitious Christians who believe in miracles." Next the answer to the conundrum under study happens to be a miracle. One wonders what was the intention of the author to build this particular mystery story, so remote from the typical stories of its genre.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Max Carrados is, as far as I know, the first blind detective. Reading this volume of nine short stories, I was struck by the lack of female characters--oh, there's the maid here, and the actress there, but they have less in the way of personality than even most of the men, except the erudite, charming Max himself. I'm also not sure that I believe all the things he can do, although the foreword goes into remarkable feats performed by blind people of the past. The edition I read has very little bibliographic information, and while a number of publishers have reprinted classic (and even less than classic) mysteries, this has the oddest and least readable typography of any I've seen.

[Rozonda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bramah created a blind detective with what could be called superpowers, (able to read newspapers with his fingertips, for example)which infuriates many; yet his tales, interesting and clever, prefigure many of today's detective story genres- some are purely scientific, some border on the supernatural, some are adventure and action-packed. Though the characters, Carrados included, are not that well built, the stories remain curious and interesting, more than a century later.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A contemporary to Sherlock Holmes, I'm quite enjoying this set of short stories. Only one story in but still recommended.