Lady Detectives on BBC Radio 4 Extra Redux

If you missed it when it was on BBC Radio 4 Extra last time in September 2011, this series is repeating on BBC Radio 4 Extra. Includes Valeria Woodville, Wilkie Collin’s lady sleuth; Violet Green in an Anna Green adaptation; L. Meade’s Florence Cusack and Catherine Pirkis’ Loveday Brooke. All four are available immediately and will remain so for about… (more…)

Radio Detective Story Hour Episode 269 – Mystery Is My Hobby

Prior to and after the commercialization of radio, many people found entertainment in the many magazines and pulps which were ubiquitous at that time. By the time radio drama began to develop there were many short stories and serials from these magazines that were beginning to be picked up by radio. those with an interest in crime oriented subjects were… (more…)

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Radio Detective Story Hour Episode 268 – Rocky Jordan

Recently, I’ve found myself drawn at night to listening to episodes of Rocky Jordan. I’m sort of in conflict with myself about this series. It’s an interesting listen, but it got me thinking about just what is it that I find attractive about this series? What I determined at least for me is an explanation of just what makes good… (more…)

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Radio Detective Story Hour Episode 267 – Suspense – Til Death Do Us Part

On November 30th, we celebrate the 110th birthday of mystery writer and radio dramatist, John Dickson Carr (right). Carr was a master of the locked room mystery and his most famous detective was Dr. Gideon Fell. However, he wrote a number of suspense thrillers including helping the CBS series Suspense get its start in the early 1940s. For a period… (more…)

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Radio Detective Story Hour Episode 266 – The Chase

By the early 1950s, radio drama was becoming a thing of the past. Television was the new “it” and advertisers were making money hand over fist in the home visual world. One anthology series on NBC was “The Chase” written mostly by Lawrence Klee.  The producers, music, staff were all in-house NBC, which was a huge cost savings. The musical bridges… (more…)

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Radio Detective Story Hour Episode 265 – Suspense: The Night Reveals

In 1934 at the height of the Great Depression, writer Cornell Woolrich decided to try to reinvent himself as a writer. He had spent most of the late twenties and early thirties attempting to be the next F. Scott Fitzgerald and he was getting nowhere despite a number of novels and short stories behind him some of which had a… (more…)

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Radio Detective Story Hour Episode 264 – New Adventures of the Thin Man

Prior to either of the two series I featured over the last two podcasts, one which began as a single fictional story, moved to film, then radio, for the most part maintained the female lead role in pretty much the same fashion of the time. This was the Dashiell Hammett story titled “The Thin Man.” The role of women in… (more…)

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Radio Detective Story Hour Episode 263 – Adventures of the Abbotts

Part two of a look at Husband/Wife detective duos and the role women played in the dramas. The Adventures of the Abbotts was the model for the last podcast offering – It’s a Crime, Mr. Collins and the drama on the former is much meatier and overall better played. The scripts were written by Howard Merrill, a former actor and… (more…)

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Radio Detective Story Hour Episode 262 – It’s A Crime, Mr. Collins

In this podcast, I look at the role of husband/wife detectives and how radio treated the role of women within the world of radio drama and production. This is the first of several parts looking at various husband/wife detective series over the years of radio drama. It’s A Crime, Mr. Collins debuted on American radio via the Mutual Broadcasting System… (more…)

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Radio Detective Story Hour Episode 261 – One Hundred in the Dark

Here is a mystery play where no clues are given. Sometimes with “clueless mysteries” we can enjoy the story for the curiosity and not worry about the “who” or “whydunnit.” This is a good example of an attempt to solve a crime in which the reader or the listener is not given any clues to help solve the crime. In… (more…)

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  • Jim Widner

  • Jim Widner

  • A former educator and current radio historian, writer and big fan of detective, suspense, and mystery fiction.