Category: Crime and Peter Chambers

EP1528: Crime and Peter Chambers: Max Daly — Suicide or Murder?

Dane Clark

A woman hires Pete to prove her uncle didn’t commit suicide.

Original Air Date: September 7, 1954

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EP1522: Crime and Peter Chambers: Murder at the Hotspot

Dane Clark

Pete investigates the murder of a night club band leader and symphony.

Original Air Date: August 31, 1954

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EP1516: Crime and Peter Chambers: The Stockbroker’s Daughter

Dane Clark
Pete is hired to deliver a letter to a wealthy man’s future son-in-law.

Original Air Date: August 24, 1954

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EP1510: Crime and Peter Chambers: The School Teacher and the Professor

Dane Clark
A school teacher hires Pete to investigate the murder of a professor’s wife.

Original Air Date: August 17, 1954

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EP1504: Crime and Peter Chambers: The Utopia Ballroom Murder

Dane Clark
Peter is hired to investigate the murder of an aspiring actress.

Original Air Date: August 10, 1954

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EP1498: Crime and Peter Chambers: Murder at the Track

Dane Clark

A jockey asks Pete for help and then is murdered after what appears to be a thrown race.

Original Air Date: August 3, 1954

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EP1492: Crime and Peter Chambers: The Miss Universe Contest Murder

Dane Clark
Peter investigates the murder of the organizer of the Miss Universe contest with three contestants as suspects.

Original Air Date: July 27, 1954

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EP1486: Crime and Peter Chambers: The Bank Teller Murder

Dane Clark

The wife of an accused embezzler turns to Peter Chambers for help.

Original Air Date: July 20, 1954

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EP1480: Crime and Peter Chambers: Murder at the Masquerade Party

Dane Clark
Peter Chambers is hired to go to a masquerade party to protect to a man who’s planning to buy an expensive. Murder ruins a wonderful evening.

Original Air Date: July 13, 1954

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EP1474: Crime and Peter Chambers: The Double Indemnity Murder

Dane Clark
Peter Chambers investigates the murder of a doll manufacturer.

Original Air Date: July 6, 1954

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EP1468: Crime and Peter Chambers: Murder at The Cafe Tropicale

Dane Clark
Pete investigates a murder at the night club.

Original Air Date: June 29, 1954

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EP1462: Bubbles Greco and the Greek Private Eye

Dane Clark
A bubble dancer friend of Pete’s refers a Greek Private Investigator in New York to help locate the other half of a valuable tiara.

Original Air Date: June 22, 1954

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EP1456: Crime and Peter Chambers: The Contessa la Fresso Murder

Dane ClarkWhen a  young cabby who is an ex-con is charged with the murder of a Contessa, Pete tries to prove his innocence.

Original Air Date: June 15, 1954

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EP1450: Crime and Peter Chambers: The Missing Earring Murder

Dane Clark
A case of mistaken identity and a missing earring lead Pete to an investigation of an elderly man’s apparent suicide.

Original Air Date: June 1, 1954

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Book Review: Hang by the Neck


I picked up a copy of Hang by the Neck out of curiosity as I’d listened to the Crime and Peter Chambers golden age radio program and was curious what the books were like.

The answer is very much the same, only with a more complex plot.

In the book, Pete is hired by Johnny the Mick to go pick up a suitcase from Johnny’s apartment. However, Pete finds the body of a beautiful woman and then the police come up and haul Johnny and Pete off to jail. Chambers released only to come home and find the body of Johnny the Mick hanging from his window.

The police conclude that Johnny murdered the girl and committed suicide but Pete knows Johnny the Mick well enough to not buy the explanation.

What follows is Chambers’ questioning and conversing with a wide variety of shady characters to get to the truth. The suspects are pretty much stock characters for a hard boiled detective novel: the seductive performer, the charming model, the shady night club owner. The one exception to this is an ex-boxer turned painter which was a nice touch. There’s also a great speech from a cop about what private investigators are for and what they ought stick to investigating. Though later events in the book make the speech more than a tad ironic.

Radio programs were known for taking massive liberities when bringing detectives not named Sherlock Holmes to the microphone, so I was surprised to find that the characters in the book spoke exactly like the radio program with some very stylized dialogue. However, reading it, there were points were the style could be a tad wearying with a few too many pages filled with rapid fire one-liners between Chambers and someone he was questioning.

Rating the book is hard. Overall, Hang By Your Neck is average or perhaps a bit above average hard boiled detective novel. However, it doesn’t approach greatness and is by no means essential for fans of the genre. Certainly Peter Chambers isn’t in the class of Philip Marlowe, Archie Goodwin, or Nick Charles. However, if you want to read a 1950s Detective novels to pass the time, this isn’t a bad choice.

Rating: 3.25 out of 5.0

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