THE EYES OF MAX CARRADOS. By Ernest Bramah. (Grant Richards.
7s. 6d. net.) Mr. Ernest Bramah's new book is a collection of detective stories. Max Carrados is blind—a sort of blind Sherlock Holmes—but his lack of sight is more than compensated, for the purposes of a detective, by the augmented keenness of his other senses. In an interesting introduction Mr. Bramah gives many remarkable instances of the sharpened perceptions of the blind. The stories make good light reading. Each poses a problem which we cannot abandon unsolved, and so our interest is insidiously caught and 'led on. But in other respects the stories are not particularly distinguished. Some of the mysteries and their solutions are a little too incredible. Mr. Carrados is more than once a little too clever to carry belief ; and there is the absence of psychology and charac- terization,a.nd the curious formality of language in the dialogue, which are peculiar to detective stories. The former character- istic is, of course, due to the author's preoccupation with his plots rather than with his people, a state which the detective story always tends to induce ; but the explanation of the latter peculiarity is obscure. Readers who love detective stories will find the book well worth reading, but those who -were delighted by Mr. Bramah's " Kai Lung ' books may find it a little disappointing. We have no wish, however, to insist that a writer should not occasionally shake a loose leg. Dulce est desipere in loco.
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