The Eyes of Max Carrados by Ernest BramahMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
A low four stars, but it has nothing specifically wrong with it to take it down to three - except that the mysteries feel a bit soft. Most of them turn out not to be crimes at all, even the ones that start out looking as if they are. You could look at this as creativity and not being bound by the usual conventions of the genre.
They're not "fair play" stories, either, which the reader could work out from the information given. The blind detective has developed his other senses to a hard-to-believe degree, making him basically Daredevil, though in this volume he doesn't have to use his abilities to fight as he did in the first collection. He's also highly intelligent, so the entertainment is that you get to watch someone very clever solve unusual puzzles in an unusual way.
The last story, uncharacteristically, introduces a supernatural element. I didn't feel it was particularly successful. Still, they're enjoyably told and out of the ordinary, and on balance I enjoyed them.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment