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Nocturnal TalesMystery audiobooks for quiet evenings

The Game Played in the Dark & The Tilling Shaw Mystery

by Ernest Bramah

Classic mysteryNo. 2221 hr 53 minMax Carrados

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The story

A double bill for the blind detective — two more cases from Ernest Bramah. THE GAME PLAYED IN THE DARK By some distance the most famous Carrados story ever written. It begins with Inspector Beedel making conversation: nothing happens abroad, he says, without leaving some trace of it in London — if only somebody troubles to look. Faked securities in Mexico. A jade charm pawned for one and threepence down at the Basin. Real First-Class Crime. Before the night is over, Max Carrados will find himself in a house he does not control, outnumbered, and entirely at the mercy of people who mean him harm. And there he will discover the one contest in which a blind man has never been at any disadvantage at all. THE TILLING SHAW MYSTERY A quieter case. It opens in Carrados's own study, the morning's clearing-up still in progress, when a girl of about twenty comes in from Oakshire — nervous, brave, and desperate. A man's life depends on a single piece of evidence. The trouble is that everybody has already accepted it without question. Tonight's pairing shows the two halves of what makes Carrados worth returning to: in the first, turning his supposed weakness into an overwhelming advantage; in the second, the patient business of refusing to accept a fact simply because everyone else already has. FOR LISTENERS These are complete, unabridged readings of The Game Played in the Dark and The Tilling Shaw Mystery by Ernest Bramah, now in the public domain. Every word is the author's own. Part of The Midnight Archive: three nights of classics every week, alongside four original Nocturnal Tales mysteries. Bramah gives his detective something the era almost never allowed: an ending that is kind. "Yes, there is friendship at first sight" is not a line Sherlock Holmes would ever have been given. Which of tonight's two cases stayed with you? SUPPORT & LISTENING OPTIONS CREDITS Narrated and produced by Nocturnal Tales. Stories by Ernest Bramah (public domain). TAGS / KEYWORDS ernest bramah audiobook, max carrados audiobook, the game played in the dark, the tilling shaw mystery, blind detective mystery, inspector beedel, edwardian mystery audiobook, wrongly accused mystery, double bill mystery, classic detective story audiobook, public domain audiobook, unabridged classic mystery

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