"Max Carrados" is a compilation of short stories published in 1914 by the English author Ernest Bramah. It is the first appearance of the blind sleuth Max Carrados, accompanied by his faithful but not always insightful Carlyle. "Carrados" was created as a rival to Sherlock Holmes and quickly found a strong following amongst the readers of The Strand. Watch out for our favourite short stories of this compilation: "The coin of Dionysius", "The last exploit of Harry the actor", "The game played in the dark". Discover Carrados, the once rival to Sherlock Holmes!

Max Carrados

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 Bravo of London - And ‘The Bunch of Violets’

À l'image de son créateur Ernest Bramah, le plus discret des écrivains, Max Carrados, aimable rentier anglais, pourrait, dans sa vaste demeure des environs de Londres, Les Tourettes, s'adonner tranquillement à la numismatique, passion qu'il partage également avec Bramah. Un soir, cependant, un de ses anciens condisciples, devenu détective privé, vient troubler sa quiétude et réveiller l'infaillible enquêteur qui sommeille en lui. Une gageure : car Max Carrados est aveugle. 
Révéré par les amateurs de littérature policière et insolite, recherché fiévreusement par les collectionneurs de premières éditions, considéré par Ellery Queen, dans son prestigieux Queen's Quorum, comme l'un des dix meilleurs recueils policiers de tous les temps, La Partie se joue dans le noir et autres nouvelles est le premier d'une série de trois volumes d'enquêtes, presque toutes inédites en français.
Poussez la porte des Tourettes et découvrez le monde ambigu et délicatement ironique d'Ernest Bramah, où les tranquilles villas des banlieues londoniennes deviennent repaires de brigands ou scènes involontaires d'horribles tragédies domestiques, et où personne pas même Carrados, héros tranquille, suave et bien plus retors qu'il y paraît n'est exactement ce qu'il semble être.
Ce premier volume des aventures de Max Carrados est préfacé par William Charlton, qui depuis plusieurs années débrouille, avec une patience digne de notre détective, l'écheveau de la biographie d'Ernest Bramah.

Les aventures de max carrados ; la partie se joue dans le noir

In Kai Lung's Golden Hours Ernest Bramah develops his own unique versions of classic Chinese folktales - and creates a few entirely new ones.

Kai Lung's Golden Hours

"The secret of the League" is a dystopian novel written by Ernest Bramah, which is widely credited for having inspired George Orwell and his 1984 for its realistic, detailed and vivid depiction of the rise of Fascism as a response to the climb to power of a Labour government. Written in 1907 in the aftermath of the 1906 General elections, which saw Labour move from 2 to 29 seats and become a powerful force in British politics, the book's ambivalence with regards to its description of the overthrow of a democratically-elected government sheds some light into the psychology and malaise of the middle classes when cornered between aggressive leftist rhetoric and the plotting upper classes financially supported by foreign influences. Still unfortunately very topical, The secret of the league must be read now.

The secret of the League

Die Figuren und Identitäten von Max Carrados und seinem Mitstreiter Mr. Carlyle werden in der ersten Geschichte "Die Münze des Dionysios" erklärt. Mr. Carlyle ist ein Privatdetektiv, der eine private Ermittlungsagentur leitet, die sich hauptsächlich mit Scheidung und Veruntreuung befasst. Er wird an das Haus von Wynn Carrados in The Turrets, Richmond, London, verwiesen, um ein Gutachten über eine Tetradrachme von Dionysius dem Älteren von Sizilien einzuholen, von der er glaubt, dass es sich um eine Fälschung handeln könnte, die im Zuge eines Diebstahls in eine berühmte Sammlung umgetauscht wurde. 

Carrados macht von seinen verbliebenen Sinnen so Gebrauch, dass seine Blindheit für andere oft nicht sofort sichtbar ist und verblüfft so Mr. Carlyle.

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