Wanted: A beautiful girl. One not afraid to look on danger’s bright face. Room 1000, The Lorenzo. This simple advertisement in a newspaper begins one of Dorothy Belle Hughes (left) psychological thriller crime stories. Hughes, whose works are only recently finding resurgence being re-published by The Mysterious Press were written mostly in the forties of which this story was first… (more…)
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Vincent Starrett was a Chicago-based journalist and crime fiction writer in the early part of the 20th century. He was an intense bibliophile and became interested in all things Sherlockian writing what is probably one of the best pastiches of Holmes in 1920 called The Adventure of the Unique ‘Hamlet.’ It is Starrett’s other fiction that this podcast is concerned… (more…)
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Eno Crime Clues is a good example of early radio detective stories from the earliest time of radio programming. Often there were very little or crude sound effects, somewhat thin plotlines and the acting was a bit stilted. These series definitely were not the sophisticated versions of later detectives such as Nick Carter, Nick Charles or Philip Marlowe. I always… (more…)
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Jonathan Latimer was an American crime writer who first was a reporter writing about the likes of Al Capone and Bugsy Moran for the Chicago Tribune and the Herald-Examiner. In the thirties he created a detective character called William Crane in a series of novels Latimer himself referred to as “half-boiled” as his stories were send ups of the likes… (more…)
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E. Jack Neuman was probably one of the best radio script writers in the age of radio drama. He wrote for many series including many detective series as well as other drama series. He moved onto a successful television writing career later in the fifties though he was still writing for radio into the mi-fifties. He considered it a privilege… (more…)
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In 1935, then relatively unknown and untested Federal Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey was appointed special prosecutor for New York County by then Governor Herbert Lehman to attempt to pursue the mob and political corruption including graft, bribes and other crimes. Inspired by Dewey’s work, a young, former law student named Edward A. Byron, created a new radio drama for producer… (more…)
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With changes in how Hollywood worked with actors and contracts, a number of well-known actors began doing usually short term series on radio including Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in Bold Venture, Dana Andrews in I Was A Communist for the FBI, Joel McCrea, Tyrone Powers, Alan Ladd and Glenn Ford, who starred in a detective/adventure series called The Adventures… (more…)
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Cornell Woolrich wrote a short story under the pseudonym of William Irish which he titled The Red Tide. While the story was well written, the plotting was overly melodramatic and never was one of his better ones. In 1943, it is believed he was given an opportunity to write a radio play based on the story for the series Suspense.… (more…)
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Another look at Dashiell Hammett’s creation for radio – The Fat Man. The Brad Runyon character was never seen in Hammett’s stories, though the overall character creation was his despite his not writing any of the scripts for radio. Hammett wasn’t a big fan of radio drama nor of how his characters were developed over the medium. Quite honestly, he… (more…)
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A revisit to the “journalist as detective” series, Night Beat. The series was much more than simply a detective-style series. It was a dramatic look at the microcosm of individuals who lived in the night in a large city. Certainly with noir-ish elements, my fascination with the series is how each character is so well defined as flawed individuals who… (more…)
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