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Welcome to Down These Mean Streets, a weekly trip back to the Golden Age of Radio where we rub elbows with the era's greatest private eyes, cops, and crime-fighters. Since 2013, I've been podcasting everything from cozy mysteries to police procedurals, spotlighting characters ranging from hard boiled gumshoes to amateur sleuths. 

Be sure to tune in each Sunday for adventures of a radio detective and the behind-the-scenes stories of their shows. Join me as we spend time with Sam Spade, Johnny Dollar, Sgt. Joe Friday, and more!

Apr 24, 2016

Dick Powell is Richard Diamond, the only radio gumshoe who carries a tune along with his gun. The big screen star’s talents are put to perfect use in the character of Diamond, a tough, glib ex-cop turned shamus in the Big Apple who is equally skilled with his wits and his fists and who always wraps up the caper with a...


Apr 17, 2016

For a dozen years on radio, Lon Clark starred as Nick Carter, Master Detective, the brilliant shamus who leapt from dime novels to pulp pages to the big screen and then to the airwaves. Aided by his girl Friday Patsy Bowen, Nick tackled cases that left the police scratching their heads in one of the longest-running...


Apr 10, 2016

Reformed thief turned private detective Michael Lanyard was known to friend and foe alike as “The Lone Wolf.” The debonair rogue thrilled readers from his first appearance in 1914, and he was a mainstay on the big screen from the silent film era through the 1940s. He made his first radio appearance not in his own...


Apr 3, 2016

In between gigs as Pat Novak, For Hire, Jack Webb brought another waterfront private eye to radio with Johnny Madero, Pier 23. The shows were similar – a little too similar for the taste of ABC and their own Webb-free Novak series. But the tough hard-boiled atmosphere, the sharp writing, and the trademark Jack Webb...