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Bob Bailey & Virginia Gregg in front of an old Microphone

Bob Bailey & Virginia Gregg

Welcome to the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio! A podcast featuring the best vintage detective radio programs. Each week from Monday through Saturday, we feature six of Old Time Radio's great detective series from the beginning of the show to its very last episode. And as a bonus, twice a month we also post a public domain movie or TV mystery or detective show video.

Along the way, I'll provide you my commentary and offer you opportunities to interact.

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- Your host, Adam Graham

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Recent Posts

EP1688: Dragnet: The Big Make

Jack Webb

Joe Friday and Ben Romero think they’ve found an armed robber who committed a senseless shooting. Their job: prove it.

Original Air Date: September 14, 1950

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EP1687: Yours Truly Dollar: The Virtuous Mobster Matter

Bob Bailey

Johnny is called by ex-mobsters in Virtue, South Carolina.

Original Air Date: June 22, 1958

When making your travel plans, remember johnnydollarair.com
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EP1686: Nick Carter: The Case of the Midway Murder

Lon Clark

A friend of Nick’s father  is murdered while searching for a mystery man at a circus.

Original Air Date: August 1, 1948

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EP1685: Philip Marlowe: The Hiding Place

Gerald Mohr

Marlowe reflects on the result of an investigation that forces him to tell a widow her son is dead.

Original Air Date: May 9, 1950

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EP1684: Ellery Queen: Nikki Porter, Suspect

Charles Tingwell

A man is found murdered in Nikki’s compartment and she’s suspected of murder.

Original Air Date: November 19, 1954

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EP1683: The Saint: No, My Darling Daughter

Tom Conway
The Saint is hired by a wealthy woman to protect her wild daughter from a shady gambler she wants to marry.

Original Air Date: July 15, 1951

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Book Review: Black Eyed Blonde

In Black-Eyed Blonde, mystery writer John Banville writing under the pen name of Benjamin Black takes on the task of writing a new Philip Marlowe novel more than a half century after the passing of Marlowe’s legendary creator Raymond Chandler.

The plot is a well-done but typical hard-boiled story line. A strikingly beautiful woman walks into Marlowe’s office and hires him to find her boyfriend.  Marlowe finds out the boyfriend was killed, but the woman claims to have seen him in San Francisco after that.

Banville doesn’t come close to matching Chandler’s powerful prose and snappy dialogue. In many ways, while this Marlowe isn’t a pushover, he’s far more polite and measured than Chandler’s Marlowe ever was, certainly far softer than he was in The Long Goodbye which this book is set after. To be fair, I don’t think that’s entirely a bad point, given Marlowe was almost over the top in that.

However, what Banville does get right are the Chandleresque characters, these sort of quirky and engaging side characters that hold not only Marlowe’s attention but ours. The plot is a  solid and engaging piece of classic hard-boiled detective fiction until the last couple chapters,  which isn’t common in pastiches. I’ve read some of Robert Goldsborough’s Nero Wolfe novels and spent most of the books unable to get into the unsubstantial plots and have stewed over how unlike Nero Wolfe the story is.  In Black-Eyed Blonde, there were a couple minutes where I thought, “This isn’t really Philip Marlowe but whatever it is, it’s very good.”

However, the ending was a bit of a letdown. Without going into details, the book becomes, in many ways, a sequel to The Long Goodbye.  There’s no need for a sequel to The Long  Goodbye, and the ending of this book doesn’t add luster to that classic tale.  Too often pastiche writers assume we want sequels and follow ups to previous stories. With Marlowe, what I want are new standalone mysteries that measure up to what’s come before.  Unlike Nero Wolfe, Marlowe was never a character whose existence depended on a regular cast or continuity.  And to be fair, this element  only looms in the end of the book. Still, I would have preferred a conclusion that made the book standalone rather than on the shoulder’s of a predecessor.

Overall, if you like classic hard-boiled novels, you’ll enjoy this book provided you’re not turned off by it’s attempt to make itself a sequel to one of the most beloved hard-boiled novels.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.0

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