The best of the Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes: Max Carrados

Carrados, Max. Max Carrados was created by “Ernest Bramah,” the pseudonym of Ernest Bramah Smith (Kai Lung), and appeared in a number of short stories and four novels and short story collections from 1913 to 1934, beginning with “The Master Coiner Unmasked” (The News of the World, Aug. 17, 1913). Max Carrados is a Superhuman Defective Detective. When Wynn “Max” Carrados was a young man he developed amaurosis as the result of a riding accident and eventually became blind. In reaction to this, “so far from crippling his interests in life or his energies, it has merely impelled him to develop those senses unused. Thus you will understand that while he may be at a disadvantage while you are at an advantage, he is at an advantage while you are at a disadvantage.” His other senses are heightened, almost to a supernatural degree, and he uses them to become a detective. He is capable of Sherlock Holmes-like deductions about those around him: he can read newspaper headlines with the touch of a fingers, can recognize a friend he has not seen in over twenty years simply by the sound of his voice, can smell a false mustache, and on at least one occasion, win a shoot-out. He can even sense good and bad “emanations.” Carrados is a good private detective, even without his sight, and he uses both his intelligence and his own sense of justice to help the preyed-upon. He is assisted by Parkinson, his faithful and observant, if none-too-bright (“a greater depth of mental vacuity than was humanly credible”) personal attendant.