Max Carrados, Detective (Illustrated)

These classic mystery stories by Ernest Bramah have been compared to Sherlock Holmes. Carrados is a blind British sleuth who relies on touch and smell the way others depend on their eyes. Here are seven (plus one) stories that will delight you with their telling. George Orwell (author of Nineteen Eighty-Four) opined that along with Arthur Conan Doyle and R. Austin Freedman, these Max Carrados mysteries by Bramah “are the only detective stories since Poe that are worth re-reading.”

British writer Ernest Bramah published 21 books and numerous short stories during his career. A longtime recluse, he carefully avoided making public any details of his personal life. “I am not fond of writing about myself, and only to a lesser degree about my work. My published books are about all I care to pass on to the reader,” he said.