An extremely rare lit fic appears
Sep. 27th, 2025 12:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tweagueI finally got round to posting the Max Carrados fic that got me back into writing!
Title: Mr Greatorex's Profession
Length: c.25.5k
Pairing: Max Carrados/Annesley Greatorex
Rating: Explicit, ish.
Fandom: Max Carrados Mysteries by Ernest Bramah / The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes S1E2 'The Missing Witness Sensation'
Summary: Annesley Greatorex has never wanted anything in his life. It seems very unfair that he should have to start now.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/71401551
To footnote that: I wrote some sections of this fic back in about 2012, at a guess. I then put it down and didn’t pick it up again for a decade; nor did I write anything else to speak of. Then, early in 2024, I picked up some of my old fic notebooks and started to read. I found that there was enough in this story to make me want to start writing it again, so I began to scribble the continuation; about 20k later it was finished. It’s clunky in places, I was definitely a bit rusty, and I tried to fit in far too many ideas; but I think writing this, a fic for a fandom that didn't really exist, helped me find the joy in writing again.
It’s based (roughly) on the Max Carrados detective stories by Ernest Bramah, probably still better known for his Kai Lung stories. They were published irregularly from 1913-34, initially as short stories in newspapers or magazines and then as short story collections, with a novel following along at the end. They can be considered part of a late-nineteenth to early-twentieth century trend for short detective stories with a novel gimmick, which might loosely be called ‘The X Detective’ - replace the X with a suitably exciting noun or adjective to theme your detective around. So we had the 1860s-70s ‘Female Detective’ stories, or Dr Thorndyke (the medical detective!), or Mr Horrocks, Purser (the purser detective!). The gimmick for the Max Carrados stories is quite simple: he’s blind. Yes, basically it’s Daredevil, only it’s the 1910s.
Now, as I’m sure will be immediately clear, there are some inherent issues in the source material here. Frankly, a detective story from the 1910s is not the place to go for nuance, and I do generally give Bramah the benefit of the doubt that his heart was in the right place; but while trying to avoid the blind-people-are-helpless trap he does tend to walk smack into the wall of blindness-is-a-superpower-really, which is marginally better but still hardly ideal. And I have to admit, I haven’t exactly gone out of my way to try to fix things - I just wanted to push a couple of dolls together and yell NOW KISS, within the confines of the series set-up. Now I’ve decided to post it, I can only apologise for the remaining insensitivities - I really just wrote this as nonsensical fun for myself.
The original stories are now all readily available online, most conveniently at Gutenberg Australia:
Max Carrados (1914)
The Eyes of Max Carrados (1923)
Max Carrados Mysteries (1927)
The Bravo of London (1934)
I haven’t rechecked them for ‘yikes’ factor recently, though I don’t remember them being egregiously bad (I have a vague memory that ‘The Bravo of London’ was more so than the others?), so it’s probably best to expect average levels of period typical racism, sexism etc, but not worse than in an average work of the period.
I have read all the Max Carrados stories - I read them all before I started writing the fic, and I reread a handful when I took it up again this year, to refresh the style - but aside from a few minor characters and details (Louis Carlyle the private inquiry agent, Greatorex’s little sister Moya), I haven’t taken very much from them. This fic is really much more indebted to the Max Carrados episode in the 1970s ‘Rivals of Sherlock Holmes’ Granada TV series. Greatorex is given much more to do in this than he really ever has in the books; and Robert Stephens’ Carrados is a much more flamboyant figure than the Carrados of the short stories. The physical details of their performances figure heavily in this: the two actors are clearly have a cracking time with the physical business, and I’m certain Stephens was deliberately playing Carrados on the green carnation end of the spectrum. (I was sad I couldn’t fit in my favourite bit of nonsense, when Carrados holds his hand up to Greatorex’s nose because he anticipates that Greatorex is going to want to shake his head in answer to his next question and he wants to be able to feel it.) I’m very sad to say this episode isn’t currently on youtube (periodically it goes up and then gets taken down again, boo hiss) - watch it if you can, it’s good fun, even if Robert Stephens is massively overacting even by standards of 1970s British TV. This fic is very obviously inspired by this incredibly handsy portrayal.
I have not been able to think of any way to address a man whose name is Annesley Greatorex while in the throes of passion. Answers on a postcard please.
Title: Mr Greatorex's Profession
Length: c.25.5k
Pairing: Max Carrados/Annesley Greatorex
Rating: Explicit, ish.
Fandom: Max Carrados Mysteries by Ernest Bramah / The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes S1E2 'The Missing Witness Sensation'
Summary: Annesley Greatorex has never wanted anything in his life. It seems very unfair that he should have to start now.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/71401551
To footnote that: I wrote some sections of this fic back in about 2012, at a guess. I then put it down and didn’t pick it up again for a decade; nor did I write anything else to speak of. Then, early in 2024, I picked up some of my old fic notebooks and started to read. I found that there was enough in this story to make me want to start writing it again, so I began to scribble the continuation; about 20k later it was finished. It’s clunky in places, I was definitely a bit rusty, and I tried to fit in far too many ideas; but I think writing this, a fic for a fandom that didn't really exist, helped me find the joy in writing again.
It’s based (roughly) on the Max Carrados detective stories by Ernest Bramah, probably still better known for his Kai Lung stories. They were published irregularly from 1913-34, initially as short stories in newspapers or magazines and then as short story collections, with a novel following along at the end. They can be considered part of a late-nineteenth to early-twentieth century trend for short detective stories with a novel gimmick, which might loosely be called ‘The X Detective’ - replace the X with a suitably exciting noun or adjective to theme your detective around. So we had the 1860s-70s ‘Female Detective’ stories, or Dr Thorndyke (the medical detective!), or Mr Horrocks, Purser (the purser detective!). The gimmick for the Max Carrados stories is quite simple: he’s blind. Yes, basically it’s Daredevil, only it’s the 1910s.
Now, as I’m sure will be immediately clear, there are some inherent issues in the source material here. Frankly, a detective story from the 1910s is not the place to go for nuance, and I do generally give Bramah the benefit of the doubt that his heart was in the right place; but while trying to avoid the blind-people-are-helpless trap he does tend to walk smack into the wall of blindness-is-a-superpower-really, which is marginally better but still hardly ideal. And I have to admit, I haven’t exactly gone out of my way to try to fix things - I just wanted to push a couple of dolls together and yell NOW KISS, within the confines of the series set-up. Now I’ve decided to post it, I can only apologise for the remaining insensitivities - I really just wrote this as nonsensical fun for myself.
The original stories are now all readily available online, most conveniently at Gutenberg Australia:
Max Carrados (1914)
The Eyes of Max Carrados (1923)
Max Carrados Mysteries (1927)
The Bravo of London (1934)
I haven’t rechecked them for ‘yikes’ factor recently, though I don’t remember them being egregiously bad (I have a vague memory that ‘The Bravo of London’ was more so than the others?), so it’s probably best to expect average levels of period typical racism, sexism etc, but not worse than in an average work of the period.
I have read all the Max Carrados stories - I read them all before I started writing the fic, and I reread a handful when I took it up again this year, to refresh the style - but aside from a few minor characters and details (Louis Carlyle the private inquiry agent, Greatorex’s little sister Moya), I haven’t taken very much from them. This fic is really much more indebted to the Max Carrados episode in the 1970s ‘Rivals of Sherlock Holmes’ Granada TV series. Greatorex is given much more to do in this than he really ever has in the books; and Robert Stephens’ Carrados is a much more flamboyant figure than the Carrados of the short stories. The physical details of their performances figure heavily in this: the two actors are clearly have a cracking time with the physical business, and I’m certain Stephens was deliberately playing Carrados on the green carnation end of the spectrum. (I was sad I couldn’t fit in my favourite bit of nonsense, when Carrados holds his hand up to Greatorex’s nose because he anticipates that Greatorex is going to want to shake his head in answer to his next question and he wants to be able to feel it.) I’m very sad to say this episode isn’t currently on youtube (periodically it goes up and then gets taken down again, boo hiss) - watch it if you can, it’s good fun, even if Robert Stephens is massively overacting even by standards of 1970s British TV. This fic is very obviously inspired by this incredibly handsy portrayal.
I have not been able to think of any way to address a man whose name is Annesley Greatorex while in the throes of passion. Answers on a postcard please.