All episodes
106 radio dramas, newest first. Every page has a video, a podcast player, chapters and the full transcript.
- Special Matters (4)
- Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases (57)
- Holmes NYC (10)
- Holmes LA (8)
- Vienna Files (8)
- Moscow Rules (6)
- Velvet Shadows (6)
- Istanbul Confidential (7)
The Case of the Harlan Park Gold
In Los Angeles, a junkman finds stolen gold-plated Laurel statuettes in a supermarket dumpster and has the best morning of his life: a reward, his name in the papers, a handshake from the Guild. By evening the police want his fingerprints and he is begging Sherlock Holmes for help. Who stole the Laurels?
Velvet and Gold
Paloma, a Chelsea dance instructor and Dr. Watson's patient, turns up at Sherlock Holmes's Brooklyn door with her engine still running. Her savings, eleven years of private lessons and no vacations, are in a fortune-teller's hands, and she wants them back. Who is Desmond, and why is his name on every bill Paloma got back?
The Case of the Empty Gilt Frames
Eight borrowed paintings vanished overnight from an exhibition in Aix-en-Provence, and the curator has come to Sherlock Holmes at Baker Street, asking that nobody know. She has not telephoned a single lender; she promised each of them that every picture would come home. Who took the pictures, and why may she not ask the police?
Held in Trust
In Los Angeles, a bank swears it never sent the statement that woke a widow when it came over her fax at midnight. At the end of the week she must sign for a new building, her money sits with a financier, and she is waiting in her car at the foot of Sherlock Holmes's steps. Who faxed her that statement?
Paris After Dark
On a winter night in Moscow, old Sedov climbs five floors to the detective Maksim Volkov's door and will come no further than the mat. After the party for his eightieth birthday, something else was in the frame of his father's Tolmachev, and the police only laughed. Half the building was in his flat that night. What became of the painting?
Three Thousand Metres Down
In Prague, four months after the freighter Kamenice was lost in the South Atlantic with six men aboard, a state insurer's claims assessor rings the detective Antonín Zima from a call box. Twelve crates of machinery, insured for a fortune, lie three thousand metres down, and someone above her wants the claim paid. What blew the Kamenice apart?
The Sapphire Below
A countess's note, written on the back of an American menu, slides under a Vienna detective's door before dawn: she buried her jewel box beneath her own house when the Russians came, and this week the Allies dug it up and opened it at the Hotel Imperial. It was empty. Who emptied it, and where is her mother's sapphire?
The Case of the Corvane Ledger
Overnight, cash machines across Midtown paid out one point nine million dollars, all in twenties. Nobody needed a crowbar: someone overseas had lifted the withdrawal limits on a batch of prepaid accounts, and the cards did the rest. Now a card processor's security chief wants Sherlock Holmes on the case before the banks open. Who emptied the machines?
Berlin Never Answers
In wartime Istanbul a money-changer from Galata climbs to the detective Kemal Arslan's rooms and will come no further than the landing. One English banknote is warm in his waistcoat, and he says it is not the money that frightens him. Then an inspector reports a secret wireless set that calls Berlin every night and is never answered. Who is calling?
The Case of the Saint's Day Ransom
The curator of Aldermoor House calls up to Sherlock Holmes's window at Baker Street: its Van Brandt was stolen last night. By the next morning a letter to the newspaper threatens to burn the girl in the picture on Saint Patrick's Day. Who would steal a painting that can never be sold, and what does the thief want in return?
Static on the Karadin
Late one night in Istanbul, a British wireless officer slips through the beer halls to the detective Kemal Arslan. Hungary wants to give up the war quietly, and she has handed its envoy two wireless sets and the one code sheet that works them. Now it lies crated in his consulate, and she has heard something. Is the secret safe?
Four Hundred Names
In Vienna, a police switchboard operator tells the detective August Brenner that her chief took a call from a Russian interpreter on a bad line and walked to Soviet headquarters on the Ring. They opened the gate for him, and he has not come out. Upstairs the word 'defected' is already typed. Did he defect, or was he sent for?
Dust and Diamonds
A Los Angeles jeweler was burgled over the weekend, and the papers say up to fifteen million dollars is gone. The manager of the building his shop stands in lost nothing, yet the investigators keep coming back to her, and tonight she asks Sherlock Holmes to come. Who emptied the vault?
Loose on the Wall
An Anselmo Vidal drawing priced at 110,000 dollars was stolen from a Manhattan gallery eleven days ago, and it has already been mailed back. The owner has a homicide captain on the case, yet he sends for Sherlock Holmes for one thing only: a name. Who stole it, and why would anyone send it home?
The Polished Letter
A Moscow translator stands on the doormat of the detective Maksim Volkov and will not sit down. This week the American papers printed a bank warning, and she knew it by her own commas: she had polished it. Someone will be blamed, she says. Who hired a Moscow translator to polish the letter that robbed Washington?
A Borrowed Voice
A Burbank studio chief calls in Sherlock Holmes: a photographer half a world away has phoned her about expenses she was kindly promised on the telephone and never repaid, yet the chief swears she has never spoken to the woman in her life. Who has been telephoning a stranded photographer in a studio chief's voice?
Last Day of October
On the last day of October the President's son walks down to the gate of a Prague villa: a shout, the railings ringing, a van door. By morning he is found on the steps of an Austrian police station, and the President's wife has come down the Castle steps alone to ask the detective Antonín Zima to bring him home. Who seized him?
Gone Away
An eighty-two-year-old woman has vanished from her Manhattan townhouse in the summer heat, leaving her handbag, spectacles and heart pills behind. The precinct has closed its book, but her housekeeper brings Holmes and Watson an answering-machine tape: a message that says she has gone away. Where did Mrs. Thorne go?
The Friday Flight
Three weeks ago, on a Friday, the metals dealer Arkady Zimin went to a Moscow airport for his flight to New York and never boarded. A girl at the check-in desk saw two men in long coats show Federal Security Service passes and walk him out. His secretary has come to the detective Maksim Volkov: who walked Arkady Zimin out?
The Sick Uncle
General Dorn, the German commander on Chios, vanished from the island four nights ago. The German consulate swears he was carried into Turkey, Ankara fears a pretext for war in Thrace, and the police director, writing in his own hand with no letterhead, asks the Istanbul detective Kemal Arslan to look into it quietly. Whatever became of the general, whom does his vanishing serve?
Paper by Noon
At noon the Ministry froze Prague's Lion Fund, and by then its best shares had already left, on transfers that carry the chairman's signature. Professor Malina, the chairman whose face is on the fund's posters, writes to the detective Antonín Zima that he is accused of a theft he did not commit and has no one else to ask. Who got those shares out before the freeze?
A Call From Strahov
While the alarm rang in a Prague gallery, the only police car on duty was sent to an empty street at Strahov. By morning four paintings worth one point four billion crowns are gone, the night dispatcher is waiting to be blamed, and his captain has locked the caller's words in a drawer. Who was the voice on the radio?
Freedom in a Locker
A stranger on the telephone is selling a jailed oil baron's freedom for seven hundred thousand dollars, and the baron's wife, Olga, has already paid half in cash. The guards have gone, the gas is cut off, and she has kept one hand clenched shut for two days. Before she pays the rest, is the voice real?
The Road to Italy
A note under a Vienna dressmaker's door says her brother Anton, who went away three weeks ago for fear of the Russians, is safe in Italy. It has no envelope and no stamp, it is signed with his name, and its hand slopes and runs, though Anton printed every letter in square capitals. Who wrote it?
No Envoy Came
Selim Hoca, a schoolteacher whose society was banned, goes to a hall in Istanbul to meet an envoy from Ankara. He is shot at the curb outside. The tea is untouched, the hall's telephone line has been cut with pliers, and the police director wants a quick verdict. Who shot him?
The Dead Button
A Manhattan jeweler says a masked gunman made her open her own safe. Her insurer's investigator says no door was forced, no safe was drilled, and the line to her panic button never once showed a fault in fourteen months of nightly checks. Was she robbed at gunpoint, or did she rob herself?
Plated, Of No Value
In the Vienna rain a woman finds her mother's Sabbath candlesticks on a market stall: silver that left her family's flat on a train which the Americans now hold under guard. The stallholder will say only that Vienna sells and she holds the scales. Who sold her the silver?
The Case of the Unwilling Traitor
Every newspaper in Europe can tell you where the man who hunted spies for Bonn is tonight: East Berlin. So his wife flies to Baker Street with a trunk and two winded porters, and asks Sherlock Holmes for the one thing the papers cannot tell her: how he got there. Did he go over of his own accord, or was he taken?
The Case of the Five Silent Sets
Has London's radioman in occupied Holland sold every agent dropped to him?
Word for Word
A producer's lawyers quote a woman's unfinished memoir back to her, word for word, though no one has ever seen those pages. Who has been reading what she has not yet published?
A Quarter to Seven
Who waited on a Manhattan sidewalk at a quarter to seven in the morning to shoot a company chief dead, and why does the whole city know the gunman's smile but not his name?
The Case of the Marenna
After a rust hulk crowded with emigrant families sinks off Eskiova in the night, what is the Karaköy quay waiting to learn, and whose name will its grief demand?
The Case of the Midnight Gramophone
Two five-pound notes bearing one serial number land on the table at Baker Street, and a Cairo inspector wants Holmes in Egypt before the week is out. Who is flooding wartime Cairo with money that its own bank swears it never prints twice?
The Case of the Hallmoor Pass Tunnel
Within a day of a naval captain's death on the night express, the Salzburg police have the sleeping-car attendant in a cell, because they say only his key opens the door the captain went out through. His daughter, a nurse at Guy's, is frightened by how fast the police moved. Is the man with the key the man who used it?
The Case of the Falling Ash
A comedian still in his studio make-up climbs the stairs at Baker Street to say he keeps losing at cards at his club in Beverly Hills. He accuses nobody, yet he says he knows his own bad luck, and this is not it. Why would a man who blames no one ask Sherlock Holmes to look into his losses before he flies home on Sunday?
The Case of the Parcels from the Sky
A café keeper from Calder Street climbs the stairs at Baker Street with real coffee and a plea to Sherlock Holmes: the police have told a woman that the dead man is her brother, yet would not let her look at him. Why would the police name a man before anyone who loved him had seen his face?
The Case of the Valdek Window
At dawn Prague telephones a woman in London: the minister she is to marry has killed himself, and the verdict comes in the same breath as the news. She wants Sherlock Holmes to look before he is buried, but Prague has changed hands and an English detective asking questions would have no standing. Why was the case closed so fast?
The Case of the Raspberry Halves
A New York defence lawyer flies the Atlantic in winter to fetch Sherlock Holmes for her client, a building superintendent whose tenants drop bottles on his stoop and whose wife's own brother swears he is a spy. With the trial only weeks off, what could a London detective find that no cable could carry?
The Case of the Abandoned Overcoat
A Soviet defector walks out of a Washington restaurant on a raw December night, leaving his overcoat on the chair; by morning he is inside the Soviet compound, and the young American who lost him has flown to London to ask for Sherlock Holmes. What kind of man walks off into the cold and leaves his coat behind?
The Cuckoo's Hour
A letter signed by men who call themselves the Brigade says an Istanbul hotel was telephoned a warning at ten past twelve, well before its wing came down. The switchboard operator who took the call swears it was half past. Which of them is right about the time?
The Case of the Spoiled Cream Pastries
A night nurse in Houston telephones Baker Street the day a young woman dies, asking Sherlock Holmes to come before the burial; by breakfast the dead woman's father has sent his own lawyer across the Atlantic to ask for Holmes too. Houston has police and pathologists of its own, so why do they want a London detective?
Letters from Bavaria
Her daughter's letter home from Bavaria says everything is fine. So why is her mother sure that something is wrong?
The Case of the Golden Mesa Jackpot
Who secretly opened the Golden Mesa slot machine before its jackpot pull?
The Case of Lipenská Street
On the evening an indicted godfather holds his Thursday coffee hour in Prague, a shot bursts his tall window and scatters glass over the cups. Who fired it?
The Case of the Three Silent Days
A week after the Damascus army's radio-silence drill, a ruined wireless importer arrives at Baker Street with three seized ledgers and a whisper of treason hanging over him. Is he the traitor the army is hunting, or only the man it has settled on?
The Case of the Twin Ledgers
Who drained seven billion dollars out of Russia through twin shells and a letterbox, while the one clerk whose signature is on every confirmation begs a detective to look past her?
The Grave in the Wood
Four witnesses were summoned to Vienna to testify about a night of killing in the Burgenland. One lies face down at the edge of a wood and another died in a burning farmhouse. Who is silencing them, and can Brenner reach the last two alive?
The Case of the Vanished Coffin
A widow telephones Baker Street after dark to say someone has taken her husband out of his grave, and the man she asks for was his friend. Who would steal the one thing, as Watson puts it, that no one on earth could sell?
The Case of the Gallery Sovereign Auctions
Who is selling a dead admiral's estate on a midnight television channel, when his daughter never agreed to part with a single piece of it?
Letters From The Belvara
A sealed letter bearing the delegation's stamp, though no delegate admits to writing it, is carried through the rain to a Vienna detective. Who put the footballers' families on the road west under that stamp?
The Nickel War
After a Sirkeci freight clerk is strangled and his death is filed as a robbery, why does his widow bring his hidden book to a detective instead of the police?
The Case of the Twice-Rung Bell
Eighteen masterpieces have vanished overnight from a country house in County Wicklow, and it is the housekeeper, not the family, who has crossed the Irish Sea to fetch Sherlock Holmes. What does a servant want him to find?
The Case of the Folded Newspaper
A policeman flies the Atlantic with an envelope too secret to telegraph: a scientist is to meet a foreign contact at a London museum gate at eleven at night. Who is the man, and what will Holmes find waiting at that gate?
The Planks That Talked
What became of a family's household that was meant to follow them to Shanghai, and why does it turn up in a Vienna auction room just before the hammer falls?
The Case of the Returned Letter
In January 1943 the Admiralty drags Sherlock Holmes across a winter Atlantic to New York over one letter that came back undelivered. Why would the Royal Navy send for a detective over a returned letter, when New York has police of its own?
The Case of the Altitude Ransom
A manager and his secretary fly halfway round the world to fetch Sherlock Holmes to Sydney, where a stranger on the telephone kept an airliner circling in the sky until three hundred and fifty thousand dollars was paid in a dark lane. Who could make an entire airline obey a voice?
The Case of the Seven O'Clock Caller
Her employer was shot and disfigured in his Rome office on Saturday night, and a husband and wife in custody each swear the other went in alone. Whose word can Sherlock Holmes trust?
The Quiet Banker
Six Moscow banks fail within a week and twelve billion rubles disappear. So why was a quiet bank employee beaten on the street for writing down a number plate?
The Case of the Six Unsigned Letters
Why does the son of a murdered machinery dealer send across Europe for Sherlock Holmes, with a young newsreader and a running cab meter, rather than trust a telephone with what he knows?
The Boarders of Joy Street
Who told the city where to look for a house that nobody can find? S01E04 of Special Matters, a continuing noir superhero audio drama from the Mono Noir Super Series. New here? Start with the pilot, S01E01, The Man in the Harbor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euQ1l6eKjg4 Previous: S01E03, The Woman Who Finds Things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksejQYJ3eD4
The Ghost Users
Why would nearly every letter sent to three million students come back undeliverable, when the bank had sampled the list and signed for it, and who stands to lose if Friday's launch goes ahead?
The Woman Who Finds Things
What do you do when the one woman in Boston who can find anything cannot find a missing child? S01E03 of Special Matters, a continuing noir superhero audio drama from the Mono Noir Super Series. New here? Start with the pilot, S01E01, The Man in the Harbor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euQ1l6eKjg4 Previous: S01E02, The Man Who Took the Blame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWom5xQyPeQ
The Hostages Who Said No
Why would four hostages refuse to be rescued from the man who is holding them in a bank vault?
The Case of the Saturday Salesman
Eleven classified folders have vanished from a locked vault at a defence plant in California, and the lock shows no sign of force. Three men hold the combination, and the company's own security chief has flown to London to say so. Who among them could have opened it?
The Case of the Whit Sunday Revolver
On Whit Monday evening a typist with a bandaged hand brings Sherlock Holmes a letter the police laughed at: an apology from whoever shot a racing driver outside a Hampstead pub. Why would a gunman stop to say sorry to a stranger?
The Case of the Cedar Cove Prowler
A mother flies through the night from New York to Baker Street, leaving her son unburied, to insist that his death in a dark upstairs hall was no mere tragedy. Why does she trust a London detective over the police who have already named it an accident?
The Case of the Thursday Club
Was the Kincaid heir kidnapped — or did he stage it?
The Case of the Easter Telegram
A village doctor and his housekeeper lie dead in a Bavarian villa on Good Friday, and the police have called it a shooting followed by a suicide. Why does the doctor's son fly to Baker Street, begging Holmes to come before the funeral?
The Case of the Abandoned Raincoat
On a wet June evening in 1949, Inspector Lestrade climbs to Baker Street clutching a sodden parcel he will not set down, hours after a passer-by was shot dead in Marlow Street. Why has Scotland Yard come to Holmes for something other than a name?
The Case of the London Glove
Who emptied the embassy's code room while smoke filled the upper floors?
The Man Who Took the Blame
Why would nineteen strangers walk into police headquarters and swear that they killed the same man? S01E02 of Special Matters, a continuing noir superhero audio drama from the Mono Noir Super Series. New here? Start with the pilot, S01E01, The Man in the Harbor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euQ1l6eKjg4
The Case of the Eleven O'Clock Blast
Who blew up a yacht moored inside a quiet California harbour, with two people aboard, at eleven o'clock on a Saturday night?
The Case of the Star-Cut Glass
The whole island has already decided who killed Sir Gideon. Did his son-in-law really do it?
The Case of the Carriage Clock
Did the vanished section head drown in the Rhine, or is he still alive?
The Case of the Thirteen Jars
Did the widow of Loudun really poison thirteen of her own?
The Case of the Venetian Cord
Who bound and strangled the millionaire in his Larkin Avenue bedroom?
The Ghost Intake
A federal agent is threatened over a man the county swears it never booked, and the recordings he made inside the jail have vanished with him. Who wanted him gone before his tapes could reach a federal court?
The Case of the Banker's Last Signature
A rain-soaked bank cashier arrives at Baker Street with a dead chairman's confession that names every theft, yet stops a hundred million dollars short of what the bank lost. Who gains when a confession cannot add up?
The Case of the Empty Clothes
What became of the Member of Parliament who vanished from a Miami beach?
The Case of Lot Twelve
Hours after Saturday's race at Gum Flats, the chief steward of the Moreton Turf Club flies halfway round the world to Baker Street, insisting the result cannot be allowed to stand. What happened in that race that a steward would cross the world rather than trust his own stewards' room?
The Pale Squares
A historic gallery is about to close over a Pollock the lab calls a fake, and its director has sent for a detective she cannot be sure will clear her. Who made the painting, and who gains if the Harlan falls?
The Man in the Harbor
How does a man drown in a dry room bolted from the inside? PILOT · S01E01 of Special Matters, a continuing noir superhero audio drama from the Mono Noir Super Series. Start here.
The Case of the Diplomatic Baggage
On a thundery September evening in 1982, a secretary telephones Baker Street: Chief Ojo has been seized from the pavement outside his own front door, in full view of her office window. Why would kidnappers work so openly, with a witness looking on?
The Case of the Marlowe Flagstone
On Easter Eve 1941, a woman walks from Stepney to Baker Street to say her sister went out after dark on Good Friday and never came home. What took a woman out into the blackout on the one night when London stood still?
The Case of the Dark Kitchen Stair
A nanny goes down to a Belgravia basement to make a pot of tea and never comes back up. Her mother rings Baker Street before the police have finished with the house. Who was waiting on the dark kitchen stair?
The Case of the Lakeside Daybed
Within hours of his wife's death, a doctor in Ohio puts an overseas call through to Baker Street and asks Sherlock Holmes to come before "the Cleveland papers decide what happened." Why is a grieving husband racing the newspapers instead of the police?
The Case of the Deaf Vault
Someone has stripped the vault of a Nice bank of twenty-nine million francs and posted the bank's English clerk a photograph of the wreckage, with one word on the back: Merci. An inspector of the Police Judiciaire carries it to Baker Street and lays it face down on Holmes's table. Why would a thief go to the trouble of thanking the clerk?
The Midnight Steamer
Who slipped Julian Crewe a warning before his Monday-at-ten interview, and why would a colonel hire a private detective rather than trust a single member of his own staff?
The Green Tag
A parcel from Beijing is stopped at JFK under a green tag, and the supervisor who signed the hold has vanished. Who needed that shipment held, and who needed it to fly?
The Case of the Furled Umbrella
Hours after a broadcaster dies of a fever, his widow telephones Baker Street because Scotland Yard has stopped listening. Yet the Yard's own inspector turns up at her door after midnight. Who is uneasy about a death everyone is calling natural?
The Case of the Misprinted Caption
A will in a dead billionaire's name turns up on a lobby desk in Salt Lake City, and the man it makes rich begs the police to burn it before he will so much as call a lawyer. Why would an heir refuse a fortune before he has even read the page?
The Case of the Vanished Admiral
Nine days after the Admiral vanishes from a London gallery wall, a letter reaches a Fleet Street night desk demanding £210,000 for pensioners' television licences, and Scotland Yard calls it the work of a crank. Why would a thief who wants the money announce himself to a newsroom?
The Case of the Midnight Lagoon Rendezvous
A day after his brother is shot dead in Rio de Janeiro, a man calls at Baker Street and begs Sherlock Holmes to act where he officially may not, afraid the killer will "walk free." Why does he fear a killer who has not yet been found?
The Case of the Clockmaker's Ticket
What sent the Marenna to the bottom in two minutes, and why has an insurance director flown through the night to put the question to Sherlock Holmes?
The Case of the Silent Farmhouse
A baby girl is found alive in her cot, fed and crying, while her parents lie dead half a mile down a New Zealand country road. A cable reaches Baker Street asking Holmes not to clear a man, but to say who fed the child. Who tended her through that night?
The Case of the Salt Lake Parcels
Hours after his wife dies in a parcel blast on their own porch, a Utah widower rings Baker Street and begs Sherlock Holmes to come before the police settle on the people who lost their money with him. Why does a grieving man turn away the answer he has been given?
The Case of the Stopped Clocks
A ship that could not sink is towed into harbour with not a soul aboard: her lamps still switched on, coats still on their hooks, both her clocks stopped at the same minute. Twenty-two people sailed in her, and none came home. Was it the sea that took them — and why would anyone abandon a ship that would not go down?
The Case of the Five-Barred Gate
Threatening letters in block capitals, a ewe's head spiked on a farm gate — and then a bomb beneath the driver's seat of a sheep farmer's car. Who planted it?
The Case of the Loyal Parrot
A bank's chief cashier swears that a voice all India knows from the wireless telephoned him and ordered fifty lakh rupees sent off in one steel trunk — and the office it seemed to speak for says no call was ever made. Was there a call at all, and if there was, whose voice was on the line?
The Case of the Blue Shawl
How could a telegram from Moscow quote a promise a young dancer had written in only one place — a sealed letter he left at his Paris hotel desk?
The Case of the Late Bus Home
Who would shoot a quiet hotel waiter dead beside his pregnant wife — and why has she scrawled across the newspaper report, “This is not my husband”?
The Case of the Empty Socket
Thirty crates went home to Moscow, and the socket in the radar nose came back empty. Who took the great valve from the Soviet jet at Hyakuri?
The Case of the Forty Empty Desks
Half a million pounds of motorists' claims money has vanished from a collapsed insurer, and the auditor who signed its accounts begs Sherlock Holmes to prove him not innocent, but merely a fool. Where did the money go?
Phones in a Basket
The phones went into a bread basket at the door — so how did a foreign envoy know, before breakfast the next morning, what the senator had decided at her private dinner?
Forty and a Half
A monthly statement shows four thousand shares bought at a price the stock never touched. Who put a number the market never paid on a client's statement?
The Case of the Silent Doorbell
A woman living alone in Rome is strangled in her flat, and the London claims man whose company insured her can find nothing wrong with the claim. So why can't he bring himself to sign it? Who killed her?