Review: If Conan Doyle and Dorothy Sayers had a child it would be Max Carrados
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 8, 2014
This Kindle version of Ernest Bramah's Max Carrados stories is a collection of stories originally published in pulp magazines rather than a digital version of a previously published book.  The collection covers the time period of 1914 (the first Max Carrados story, "The Coin of Dionysius") through the WWI years into the 1920s.  Very few Carrados mysteries are "murder mysteries" but are more likely to deal with fraud, theft and (in the war years) espionage.Although Carrados first appeared as the Sherlock Holmes stories were ending and seven years before the first Lord Peter Wimsey story was published, his stories have a distinct resemblance to both.  The blind detective has Holmesian powers of observation but a more affable personality and affluent lifestyle similar to Wimsey.Modern mystery readers may have some trouble adapting to Bramah's style particularly in the earliest stories.  Even with the Holmes stories, we are accustomed to a detailed exposition of the mystery and some kind of resolution for the characters (i.e., "the boy and girl got married and had three children", "the murderer was tried and executed"). The early Carrados stories just stop.  Yes, the solution is revealed along with Carrados's observations but it can be a bit obscure particularly since modern readers won't be familiar with many aspects of daily life in the early 20th century. It took me awhile to understand "The Ghost of Massingham Mansions" since I am not familiar with the lighting or plumbing in use in 1890's apartment buildings.  But it was actually a very effective and touching way to end "The Ingenious Mr. Spinola".  Later stories are noticeably different as some do have more detailed endings.This would have been a pleasant enough read if not for a major failure in kindle formatting.  Although the first few and last stories are well formatted, the middle is difficult.  All sense of paragraphing and quotation marks are lost so that it is sometimes hard to tell who is speaking to whom and if it is a character speaking at all.  One later story suddenly appears at the end of another with no chapter break (and then appears again as its chapter in the table of contents).