Month: October 2013

EP1092: Nick Carter: Corpse in the Cab

Lon Clark

An ex-con cabby comes to Nick for help when he finds one of his passengers murdered in the back of his cab.

Original Air Date: February 5, 1944

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EP1091: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Callicles Matter, Part Three and Four

Bob Bailey
The missing man is found and his wife dead…or are they?

Original Air Dates: May 2 and 3, 1956

 

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EP1090: Amazing Mr. Malone: Hard Work Never Killed Anyone

George Petrie
An abusive husband is murdered after beginning to blackmail his real first wife.

Original Air Date: June 22, 1951

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EP1089: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Callicles Matter, Parts One and Two

Bob Bailey
Johnny investigates the case of a wealthy man who is bonded for $100,000 and has disappeared without notice for ten days and no one cares about it.

Original Air Dates:  April 30 and May 1, 1956

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EP1088: The Line Up: The Twitching Twists Twenty-Two Tweaking Case

William Johnstone

Guthrie suspects foul play in the case of a missing woman.

Original Air Date: July 15, 1952

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Audio Review: Dr. Who: Marco Polo

Dr. Who has become a 21st phenomena with the series revival growing to even greater acclaim than the previous stories. Yet, it still has its roots in the 1960s where the first two Doctors played by William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton gave the character his roots. The stories of the Doctor and his companions were originally produced as half hour programs that were serialized stories as opposed to the one hour usually self-contained today.

I’ve watched a decent amount of first doctor material. I’ve seen the first three serials with Hartnell as well another, “The Aztecs.” News came out that two previously lost serials are now available for purchase both starring the second doctor Patrick Troughton, but that leaves nearly a hundred episodes of the show lost,  effecting twenty-six different serials including the last two Hartnell stories and first seven with Troughton.

While hopefully more of these videos will emerge, Dr. Who fans don’t have to wait to at least enjoy the stories because sound tracks of early Dr. Who episodes, recorded by fans at the time the series aired, and remastered and re-released by the BBC are available through Audible. So, I’m going to listen to all the Dr. Who missing  episodes I can’t see beginning with Marco Polo and see how the  audio format helps or hurts.

“Marco Polo”  is  the fourth Dr. Who Serial and ran seven episodes from February to April 4 and follows after the events of “The Edge of Destruction” which left the TARDIS  damaged and finds the Doctor and the TARDIS crew (Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright, and Susan Foreman) stranded on top of a snow capped mountain and in danger of freezing to death. However, they encounter several Chinese as well as a Mongol warlord named Tagama who wants them killed. However, the Chinese are led by Marco Polo who saves them and treats them kindly.  However, they quickly find that Polo’s motives are not entirely pure: He wants to give the TARDIS to Kublia Khan in hopes of securing his own return home to Venice. However, the warlord Tagama has designs on TARDIS of his own.

The audio is narrated by William Russell (who played Chesterton in the series) who shares bits of action that the soundtrack can’t pick up. These bits are minor. In some ways, being in an audio format helps this series as the setting is quite ambitious  with luscious and ornate Oriental settings.  Given the budget of the original show, it’s safe for me to say that the theater of the mind will easily beat what 1960s British TV could do in its portrayal of the Khan’s palaces.

This serial also seemed reminiscent in its slower pacing of radio serials I’ve listened from the 1940s and ’50s which often had more deliberate pacing overall with cliffhangers built in to keep the audience’s attention.

Another big difference from the modern Dr. Who is that other than involving time travel, this story has very little science fiction. If there were a modern Dr. Who/Marco Polo stories there’d be ghosts, space aliens, or zombies thrown in.  Instead what we get is a great historical adventure with its share of twists but just an adventure happening in medieval China.

The character of Marco Polo makes this story unique from many early serials. While in other programs like “The Aztecs, ”  characters like Tagama scheme and turn initial allies of the TARDIS crew into enemies, this is a lot more complex as Polo is enlightened. He isn’t superstitious, bloodthirsty, and works to save the crew despite requests to kill them.  His broad experiences have made him willing to consider anything including their claim that the TARDIS is a flying caravan, which is why he stole it. He feels bad about it too.  Polo’s moral struggle really does create some solid dramatic tension. 

Less interesting is the overused trope of the girl about to enter into an arranged marriage that doesn’t want to do it, and the convenient plot device used to resolve it, though they did do a decent job making the character likable and someone you care about.

While the serial isn’t great, it’s good for what it is: a fun historic adventure serial. It works well with the audio format  and for now, it’s the only way to encounter the classic Marco Polo story line unless you want to read the novelization.

Rating: 3.75 out of 5.00

This serial is available from audible.com

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EP1087: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Lonely Hearts Matter, Parts Three and Five

Bob Bailey

A man has been murdered and his widow’s last husband also died.  Did she kill him?

Original Air Dates: April 25 and 27, 1956

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EP1086: Nick Carter: The Unwilling Accompliace

Lon Clark

Nick Carter is dared to solve a series of high price crimes by the perpetrator.

Original Air Date: January 29, 1944

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EP1085: Gunsmoke: Mark Dillon Goes To Gough Eye

 Michael Rye

Marshall Mark Dillon goes to Gough Eye to investigate an allegedly crooked roulette wheel and finds a a series of murders.

Audition Date: June 11, 1949

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EP1084: Mr. Malone: Early to Bed Early to Rise

George Petrie

A musician is murdered after beginning an affair with a married woman.

Original Air Date: June 15, 1951

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EP1083: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Lonely Hearts Matter, Parts One and Two

Bob Bailey

Johnny investigates the murder of a man who left a $50,000 policy to his late wife one month after marrying her through a lonely hearts club.

Original Air Dates: April 23 and 24, 1956

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Book Review: Back on Murder

For Roland March, it’s pretty simple, either he’s going back (to being homicide detective) or he’s going out (as in completely out of the Houston PD) March made headlines seven years before when he solved a sensational murder, but the high expectations caused by the publicity of the case combined with a personal tragedy led to a decline in his work where he’s on one dead end assignment after another, most regularly working a sting where police capture stupid wanted felons lured into the open with the promise of winning a free car contest.

March makes some keen observations at scene of the murder of an inner city drug dealer. March believes that the murder is tied into a nationally covered disappearance of a teenage girl. He goes against orders to look into the angle and gets yanked off the case and on to the task force looking into the disappearance, another dead end. Can March somehow parlay his hunches, uncover the secrets of a group of crooked cops, and stay alive so that the get his career and life back on track.

The book is remarkably well-written and has high quality throughout most of it. March is a fantastic character with his own set of inner demons. March’s narration varies from hard boiled wry cop sarcasm to poignancy, to vivid and powerful word images that paint as clear a picture of 21st Century Houston as Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe’s stories did of 1940s Los Angeles. The character does change as the story goes on. He becomes more of a team player. At the beginning of the book, his focus is really on him: The quest to get back into Homicide. As his focus shifts to the case at hand, actually getting his man leads to real cooperation.

The mystery is a clever tangled web of intrigue that intersects with crooked cops, with honest efforts to help other, and an old rival of March’s that won’t go away. Really, everything ties together in the end and the clues are solidly laid out.

The last quarter, and the last sixth of the book in particular do suffer a bit of a slowdown with more fizzle than sizzle. Bertrand made the dubious decision to fill in a bunch of back story details towards the end of the book as we were closing in on the killers and a hurricane kills not one by two birds for our hero. These are minor issues given how good the rest of the book was.

The book is from a Christian company, but has little Christian material. March is a moral man but not a believer. The best Christians get from the book is a murder mystery that doesn’t make a Christian look like a psycho. The book is a clean read as far as profanity goes and doesn’t go for overly graphic

Overall, I enjoyed the book immensely and will be watching for the next book in the series.

Rating: 4.25 out of 5.0

Note: The Kindle version of this book is available for free.

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EP1082: The Line Up: The Be-Bop Bandits Bungling Bang-Bang

William Johnstone

Guthrie investigates a horrific bank robbery and murder.

Original Air Date: November 5, 1952

referred to as Luger-lugging Laddie in error.

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EP1081: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Shepherd Matter, Part Five and Dr. Tim Detective: The Mystery of the Chest of Dynamite

Bob Bailey

Johnny is confronted by an armed murder suspect.

Original Air Date: April 20, 1956

On a hike in a the forest, Dr. Time finds a boy deathly ill, but why.

Original Air Date: 1948

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EP1080: Nick Carter: Records of Death

Lon Clark

A man who bought ten records that chronicled a murder contacts Nick to find out who was killed and who committed the murder.

Original Air Date: January 22, 1944

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