The Eyes of Max Carrados

A blind man should be the last person to solve crimes—yet Max Carrados is the most formidable detective in Edwardian London. Robbed of his sight by a riding accident, Carrados has trained his remaining senses to an almost uncanny pitch: he reads newsprint with his fingertips, detects a disguise by the faint smell of spirit gum, and can shoot a villain by aiming at the sound of a heartbeat. Assisted by his sharply observant manservant Parkinson and his old friend Louis Carlyle of the private inquiry agency, he moves through a world of forged manuscripts, poisoned dishes, vengeful ghosts, and vanishing actresses with preternatural calm.

This second collection of Carrados investigations presents nine interlocking mysteries, each complete in itself yet bound together by the brilliant, urbane figure at their center. From a rare-book fraud that winds back three centuries to a spy case on the storm-battered Kent coast, Bramah combines ingenious puzzle-plotting with a generous wit and an Edwardian elegance of style that earned the series high praise from George Orwell, who ranked it alongside Conan Doyle and R. Austin Freeman as the only detective fiction since Poe truly worth re-reading.