The complete short story casebook of the blind rival of Sherlock Holmes In the pages of the influential Strand Magazine, there was a time when Ernest Bramah's stories of crime and detection, featuring the blind detective Max Carrados, appeared alongside those about the world's most renowned fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, and received equal critical acclaim. George Orwell considered the Max Carrados stories to be among the finest detective fiction published since the genre's creation by Edgar Allan Poe. The first Carrados stories appeared in 1914 as the Great War erupted and although they have not endured in the public imagination to the same degree that Holmes and Watson have, they were phenomenally popular and occasionally out-sold Conan Doyle's stories in book form. In common with Holmes and his Dr. Watson, wealthy and urbane Carrados operated with his own indispensible partner, the slightly shady Mr. Carlyle, and was further assisted by his manservant Parkinson and his secretary Mr. Greatorex. His blindness, caused by an accident, made Carrados very distinctive,