Mar 29, 2015

In 1944, Michael Shayne came to radio. Brett Halliday’s red-headed shamus had thrilled readers and moviegoers, and Wally Maher was tapped to bring the character to the airwaves. Maher starred as Shayne (with Cathy Lewis as Shayne’s secretary Phyllis Knight) for the next three years. Maher’s Shayne was cocky and...

Mar 22, 2015

The radio success of Mr. and Mrs. North convinced CBS to bring the adventures of the crime-solving couple to television. Richard Denning and Barbara Britton starred as Jerry and Pam and moved to take over the radio roles after a year on the small screen. Denning and Britton continued the program’s trademark balance of...

Mar 15, 2015

Hercule Poirot, the diminutive, eccentric, and brilliant Belgian detective, has thrilled mystery fans since his first appearances in the novels of Agatha Christie. In 1945, he came to American radio in a series that boasted an introduction by Christie herself. Harold Huber starred as the mustachioed master of deduction...

Mar 8, 2015

We raise a glass to Mickey Spillane, the hard-boiled wordsmith born March 9, 1918. Spillane introduced the world to Mike Hammer, one of fiction’s toughest gumshoes, in 1947, and detective fiction was never the same. The unique blend of sex and violence, powered by Spillane’s terse prose, enthralled readers and led...

Mar 1, 2015

Craig Rice’s crafty criminal lawyer John J. Malone, a wisecracking counsellor at law, sprang from the pages of mystery novels to radio in The Amazing Mr. Malone. Malone takes tough cases in Chicago, where he does his own leg work to clear his wrongfully accused clients. He’s more of a Paul Drake than a Perry Mason...