A fictitious blind investigator named Max Carrados appears in Ernest
Bramah's 1914 collection of mystery stories and books, Four Max Carrados
Detective Stories. In the Strand Magazine, the four Max Carrados
detective stories coexisted with the Sherlock Holmes adventures. The
Carrados stories routinely outsold the Holmes stories at the time, even
though they didn't have the same length. Bramah was frequently billed
above Arthur Conan Doyle. Max Carrados and The Eyes of Max Carrados,
according to George Orwell, "are the only detective stories since Poe
that are worth re-reading," together with those of Doyle and R. Austin
Freeman. In the first narrative, "The Coin of Dionysius," Max Carrados
and his regular sidekick Mr. Carlyle's personalities are described.
Private investigator Mr. Carlyle oversees a business that focuses
primarily on divorce and defalcation. For an expert opinion on a
tetradrachm of Dionysius the Elder of Sicily that he suspects may have
been a counterfeit put into a famous collection during a theft, he is
led to Wynn Carrados' residence at The Turrets in Richmond, London. When
they first meet, the blind Carrados quickly recognizes Mr. Carlyle as
Louis Calling, a former classmate from St. Michael's.
