Month: June 2016

EP1926: Boston Blackie: Sam Bellows is Dead

Richard Kollmar
Boston Blackie needs to see a man who won’t answer the door. Blackie tells Farraday he killed the man in order to locate the man, but when the man actually turns up dead, Blackie has to clear himself.

Original Air Date: June 18, 1945

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EP1925: Richard Diamond: The Betty Moran Case

Dick Powell

A wealthy woman kills a man who blackmails her and then is shot herself. The police believe it was a murder-suicide, but her husband thinks otherwise and hires Diamond to find her Blackmailer’s partner.

Original Air Date: May 29, 1949

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EP1924: The Avenger: Death Counts Ten

A boxer dies in the ring and it looks like homicide.

Original Air Date: April 12, 1946

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AWR0001: The Whistler: A Brief Pause for Murder

Amazing World of Radio
A disc jockey plots to kill his wealthy wife but needs to find an alibi, and thinks he found it when an engineer with a past.

Original Air Date: August 9, 1946

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EP1923: Michael Shayne: The Case of the Wandering Fingerprints

Jeff Chandler
A blackmailer who claims he can plant people’s fingerprints at crime scenes what’s Mike to act as his front man.

Original Air Date: Sometime in 1948

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Podcast Awards Live Tonight at 8 PM ET/6 PM MT

Will the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio win the Podcast Awards? Watch tonight at 8PM ET/6 PM to see the result.

A Look at Elementary, Season One


The first season of Elementary finds a tattooed Sherlock Holmes (Johnny Lee Miller) living in modern day New York as part of his rehab from heroin addiction. Ex-Surgeon Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) has changed careers and is now a sober companion for recovering addicts and lands Holmes as a client. Holmes is called in frequently as a consultant for the NYPD in solving strange and unusual cases.

Probably the first thing to get out of the way is that this is Sherlock Holmes in name only. Unlike Sherlock, which seeks to bring Holmes into the twenty-first century and updates the character accordingly, Elementary changes almost every detail about Holmes other than his name and general methods, and a few personality quirks. You can’t change not only the period, but also the setting, the background of the character, but also the gender of Holmes’ assistant, and that character’s nature, personality, and potential and have something that can really be compared to Doyle’s originals. The series is least convincing when it tries to re-use names, concepts, quotes, and characters but in ways that have little relation to the original story.

The best way to enjoy Elementary is to enter it with no expectation that it will be anything like Sherlock Holmes and to enjoy it on its own merits.If it helps, take my wife’s joking suggestion and mentally rename him Bob.

The mysteries are well-crafted and engaging. The plots are clever, usually with Holmes reaching several mistaken solutions on the way. Sometimes, the actual solutions are quite shocking such as, “Child Predator,” but all really have a great deal of inventiveness, although it does seem that Holmes accuses way too many innocent people of murder in some of these episodes.

Elementary’s Holmes and Joan Watson both have histories that are slowly unraveled, with Holmes’ drug addiction and the events that surrounded it. While Elementary’s Holmes ends up on the side of the angels, he can go into some gray areas particularly as a matter of revenge.  Holmes tends towards arrogance, whicht makes him uncomfortable and awkward as he faces the world of drug rehab, which keeps forcing him into moments which cut against his pride.

Joan Watson is a bit of an enigma. Her career change from surgeon to sober companion was a come down in the world. She finds herself drawn into the world of criminal investigation. At the start of the season, she’s following him as part of the obligation to be in contact with him, but she becomes increasingly involved and engaged in the world of criminal investigations. She finds a new path through the course of the season and it’s very fun to watch.

The characters do work well together, and we learn quite a bit about them throughout the season. However, it’s very well balanced developed so that by the end of the season,  you have a sense that there are greater depths to explore. The supporting cast is understandably less explored. Captain Gregson (Aidan Quinn) has a few moments that reveal his differences with Holmes as well as his appreciation for him. Despite having an episode, in which he was accused of murder, Lieutenant Marcus Bell (Jon Michael Hill) is mostly a functional role in this first season.

The series does have a bit of story arc in the second half of the season involving its Moriarty. It’s certainly not a bad arc, but I found myself unexcited by the ending which seemed to drag and not really end strongly.

Overall, this series is more like a non-humorous version of Monk than it is a proper Sherlock Holmes. It’s enjoyable for what it is,when it doesn’t halfheartedly try to be something it’s not.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.0

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EP1922: Dragnet: The Big Run

Jack Webb
Friday and Romero search for the driver of a car that ran down two elderly women.

Original Air Date: June 21, 1951

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EP1921 Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Frantic Fisherman Matter

Bob Bailey
Johnny is called out to Lake Mojave Resort by an old friend who has some suspicious about a mysterious fisherman.

Original Air Date: July 12, 1959

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EP1920: Boston Blackie: Oscar Wolfe, Troublemaker

Richard Kollmar

Blackie threatens Oscar Wolfe to get him to stop harassing a woman and a friend of Blackie. Wolfe is found dead and a dictaphone recorded Blackie’s threats.

Original Air Date: June 11, 1945

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EP1919: Richard Diamond: The Stolen Purse

Dick Powell
An elderly lady grifter hires Diamond to find the owner of a purse. Before he knows it, Diamond has to explain a body in his office.

Original Air Date: May 22, 1949

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EP1918: The Avenger: A Shot in the Dark

A wealthy man is blackmailed and then is suddenly murdered.

Original Air Date: April 5, 1946

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EP1917: Michael Shayne: The Case of the Borrowed Heirloom

Jeff Chandler
Shayne is hired by an elderly man to retrieve a leather case with nothing in it.

Original Air Date: Sometime in 1948

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Book Review: Trent’s Last Case

Trent’s Last Case (1913) features amateur detective Philip Trent being called in to solve the murder of a business tycoon with many enemies and a complicated relationship in the tycoon’s own house.

Trent is  a departure from the thinking machines that dominated detective fiction of the time. He was an eccentric, a romantic, and a painter with a light touch and a good deal of humor. Still, he also has a sharp mind.

The case itself is a solid puzzle. Trent uses his deduction and wit to come up with a clever solution which proves to be wrong. We don’t learn who the murderer is until the very end, and the person who did it was someone you never would have guessed.

The story had a great impact on the future detective novels. There is a little bit of over-indulgent social commentary to wade through, particularly after the start. However, even after over a hundred years, the novel holds up well as a light and engaging read.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0

Trent’s Last Case is in the public domain and is available for a free Download through

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EP1916: Dragnet: The Big Building

Jack Webb
The wealthy wife of a dentist has disappeared and foul play is suspected.

Original Air Date: June 14, 1951

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