"THE FIRST AND BEST BLIND DETECTIVE!" That’s how the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection hails the adventures of Max Carrados. Ellery Queen calls this first volume of his adventures, "One of the ten best volumes of detective shorts ever written!" Blinded in an accident, Carrados developed remarkable abilities. He can read newspaper headlines with a touch of his fingers, recognize a friend he has not seen in twenty-five years by his voice, and detect a man wearing a false moustache because "he carries a five-yard aura of spirit gum."  Nor did his loss of sight affect his sense of humor, his compassion, or a sense of justice which forces him to skirt the law to see the innocent is protected and the guilty punished. As the author puts it, Carrados' blindness "…but so far from crippling his interests in life or his energies, it has merely impelled him to develop those senses which in most of us lie dormant and practically unused. Thus you will understand that while he may be at a disadvantage while you are at an advantage, he is at an advantage while you are at a disadvantage." Working with his old friend, Louis Carlyle, a private investigator, the wealthy Carrados pursues his talent for detection whenever he pleases without accepting a fee. The exchanges between the humorless Carlyle, eager for Carrados help but unwilling to admit his bafflement, and the gentle malice of the perceptive Carrados are among the high spots of the stories.

The classic crime novel featuring blind detective Max Carrados, whose popularity rivalled that of Sherlock Holmes, complete with a new introduction and an extra short story. In his dark little curio shop Julian Joolby is weaving an extravagant scheme to smash the financial machinery of the world by flooding the Oriental market with forged banknotes. But this monster of wickedness has not reckoned on Max Carrados, the suave and resourceful investigator whose visual impairment gives him heightened powers of perception that ordinary detectives overlook. Max Carrados was a blind detective whose stories by Ernest Bramah appeared from 1914 alongside Sherlock Holmes in the Strand Magazine, in which they often had top billing. Described by George Orwell as among ‘the only detective stories since Poe that are worth re-reading’, the 25 stories were collected in three hugely popular volumes, culminating in a full-length novel, The Bravo of London (1934), in which Carrados engages in a battle of wits against a fiendish plot that threatens to overthrow civilisation itself. This Detective Club classic is introduced by Tony Medawar, who investigates the impact on the genre of Bramah’s blind detective and the relative obscurity of this, the only Max Carrados novel. This edition also includes the sole uncollected short story ‘The Bunch of Violets’. As well as on the page, the Max Carrados stories have been a firm favourite on television and film, played over the years by (among others) Robert Stephens, Simon Callow and Pip Torrens, and read on audio by Arthur Darvill and Stephen Fry.

The twelve earliest Max Carrados mystery stories (first published in the UK in 1913) are collected here. One of the "blind detectives" of the golden-age of detective fiction, Carrados was intelligent, resourceful, and used his highly-developed senses to track down criminals, often in aid of his friend, the private detective Mr. Carlyle.

Max Carrados is everything a proper Edwardian Detective should be, intelligent, observant, educated, of independent means. He's also blind, but he never lets that stop him from solving a crime. Taken from the pages of the \Strand\, where he often received top billing over Sherlock Holmes, the eight stories in this volume show the celebrated detective at his deductive best. Whether he is determining whether an ancient coin is genuine or debunking a haunting he never fails. Read about his amazing powers in Max Carrados Resurrected! Stories Coin of Dionysius, The Knight's Cross Signal Problem, The Tragedy at Brookbend Cottage, The Last Exploit of Harry the Actor, The Mystery of the Poisoned Dish of Mushrooms, The Ingenious Mr. Spinola, The Ghost of Massingham Mansions, The Disappearance of Marie Severe

This early work by Ernest Bramah was originally published in 1927 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introduction. 'Max Carrados Mysteries' is a collection of Bramah's classic detective tales containing 'The Secret of Headlam Height', 'The Mystery of The Vanished Petition Crown' and many other stories. Ernest Bramah Smith was born was near Manchester in 1868. He was a poor student, and dropped out of the Manchester Grammar School when sixteen years old to go into the farming business. Bramah found commercial and critical success with his first novel, The Wallet of Kai Lung, but it was his later stories of detective Max Carrados that assured him lasting fame.

This early work by Ernest Bramah was originally published in 1914 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introduction. 'The Clever Mrs Straithwaite' is one of the classic Max Carrados detective mysteries. Ernest Bramah Smith was born was near Manchester in 1868. He was a poor student, and dropped out of the Manchester Grammar School when sixteen years old to go into the farming business. Bramah found commercial and critical success with his first novel, The Wallet of Kai Lung, but it was his later stories of detective Max Carrados that assured him lasting fame.

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 storiesfeaturing 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.