SOURCE: "Ernest Bramah: Max Carrados," in A Book of Prefaces to Fifty Classics of Crime Fiction, 1900-1950, Garland Publishing, 1976, pp. 23-4.

In the following essay, Barzun and Taylor briefly introduce Max Carrados, Bramah's first book of tales featuring his famous blind detective.

Just as the classic novelist wants to make his hero or heroine differ in character or circumstance from all previous ones, so the writer of detective tales feels obliged to make his investigator in some way singular. The demand leads to some dreadful temptations, one of which is to make the detective a blind man. Ernest Bramah was so tempted, but unlike others, who have variously gone in for bumblers, drunkards, paraplegics, and certifiable idiots, he achieved an unquestioned triumph in Max Carrados. This able and amiable man of otherwise independent means is but little dependent on help for the remarkable things he does, and these...