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What would happen if the immortal detectives, Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown met with a brutal murder to solve?
This is the fascinating question posed by Rev. Stephen Kendrick’s 2001 Book, Night Watch. The plot of the story is that Sherlock’s Holmes’ brother, Mycroft, the British’s government’s most indispensible man as Sherlock Holmes described him, calls his younger brother in to investigate a murder. The rector of an Anglican Church is found dead in his church, with his body mutilated. The prime suspects: leaders of the world’s major religions who’d gathered in Britain for some inter-religious dialog. Father Brown is serving as an interpreter for a visiting Italian Cardinal.
The murder and its solution are fantastic. However, the story is dragged down because of some errors in Kendrick’s writing mechanics and also because Kendrick’s story was frequently derailed from the story to Kendrick’s religious agenda. In part, the book was written to back up Kendrick’s assertions in Holy Clues: The Gospel According to Sherlock Holmes which seems to suggest that in Holmes later days in became someone who could best be described as “spiritual and not religious.” Unfortunately, the author seemed to work too hard on this angle, which distracted from the main point that readers who weren’t enthusiasts of Universalism picked up the for: a murder mystery.
Kendrick’s treatment of Holmes, Watson, and Brown was good, but in places uneven. I found some of the conversations between Holmes and Watson not entirely believable and out of place in a mystery novel. Kendrick’s Holmes was a cut below Doyle’s in solving the case, and Kendrick tried a cheap out by simply saying that Doctor Watson’s accounts had been exaggerated or unrealistic. To be fair, Kendrick is hardly the first author of a Holmes pastich to use that out. What Arthur Conan Doyle created in Holmes was a bit of a mental Superman, and like Superman it’s very hard to come up with a worthy opponent for him. So, it’s far easier to move the character closer to reality.
His portrayal of Brown, while not having the flair of G.K. Chesterton, and leaving the character a little flat was still essentially the same orthodox Catholic priest that readers have come to know and love. Given that Kendrick, as a Unitarian Universalist, comes from a completely different theological perspective than Chesterton, he deserves to be commended for not trying to tamper with the character, as some interpretations have tried to change Brown into their vision of what a Christian should be rather than the character Chesterton created.
Of course, in a two-detective story, one detective usually draws the short straw, and Brown clearly has the back seat to Holmes. However, in Chesterton’s books, Brown off hung around in the background until coming forward to the solution to the crime.
Kendrick’s deserves credit for the audacity of it all. He’s the first author I know of to try and bring these giants of detecting onto the same stage. And he produces an interesting, albeit not completely satisfying tome. Here’s hoping that others will follow Kendrick, and this isn’t the last Holmes-Father Brown crossover we see.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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Paladin must take on the hardest challenge he has ever faced, turning
a wild girl into a civilized girl.
Original Air Date: December 07, 1958
Written by Gene Roddenberry
Click here to download. Click here to add the Old Time Radio Westerns Podcast to Itunes. Click here to add it to Zune. Click here to use any other device. Visit http://otrwesterns.com for more.
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(Courtesy of Digital Deli.)
A woman with apparent amnesia stumbles into Pat Novak and then dies. Novak has to find out who she really is before Hellman rushes him off to the gas chamber.
Quote of the Episode:
“If I didn’t move fast, I was deader than a Philadelphia nightclub.”
Original Air Date: February 27, 1949
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An elderly woman sends an urgent message to Box 13. The reason…there’s a dead body in her room.
There are a number of ways to get an Old Time Radio fix. Each has advantages and disadvantages to it. There’s some debate back and forth between various sites. I think each can meet the needs of a specific base of fans.
My purpose is not to reccomend any specific products, hosts, or services, only to give the interested fan a look at the benefits and drawbacks of each way of accessing Old Time Radio.
It should also be said that just because there are disadvantages to a method doesn’t mean the medium is bad, just giving pros and cons.
Here’s a ranking of which shows are most popular based on downloads of the first episode, one week after release:
1) Pat Novak for Hire
2) Box 13
3) Yours Truly Johnny Dollar
4) Sherlock Holmes
5) Let George Do It
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When Pat Novak finds $1000 depsited in his bank account and a beautiful woman who wants him to find a Jack of Clubs, he runs into murder.
Original Air Date: February 20, 1949
“You can’t find your hip pocket with radar.”-Pat Novak to Hellman
Finished the least fun part of Podcasting this morning as I went through the painstaking submission process for the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio to increase search engine hits and subscriptions onto Itunes. It’s been a long time since I did this with The Old Time Dragnet Show. However, I’m pleased to report that it only took a couple hours to get through. I focused on directories that I found the Dragnet podcast in as well as the top podcast directories outside of Itunes. One directory that focused on Drama Podcasts had disappeared since the last time I did this.
The great thing about this is that with Google, Blogging, and Itunes, much of this is much more automatic than it used to be. Way back in the olden days of the 1990s. It took days to complete site promotion.
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A life insurance company sends a letter to Box 13 in hopes of getting Dan Holiday to locate a missing man who the insurance adjuster believes is alive.