Max Carrados

Ernest Bramah’s detective was blinded in a riding accident, and Bramah made that the whole point. Max Carrados works his cases by hearing, touch, and smell, reading counterfeit coins with his fingertips and catching what sighted witnesses walked straight past, all with an unhurried good humor that keeps the stories light on their feet. George Orwell rated these tales alongside Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Thorndyke as the only detective fiction since Poe worth rereading, and the wonder is how rarely the premise feels like a gimmick. Carrados is simply better at paying attention than everyone around him. The stories first appeared in 1914, when Holmes still owned the genre outright. Free PDF and EPUB edition available here.