Mystery / crime anthology · CBS (West Coast) / Signal Oil
The Whistler
May 16, 1942 – September 22, 1955 · 720 broadcasts
The Whistler was a mystery anthology framed by one of radio's most haunting devices: an unnamed narrator who walks by night and knows the secret terrors of ordinary people. Each episode opened on footsteps and a whistled theme, then the voice -- "I am the Whistler, and I know many things, for I walk by night..." -- before commenting on the action like a Greek chorus, taunting the guilty and innocent alike from outside the story. The house formula was iron: a criminal's act undone by an overlooked detail or his own stupidity, capped by an ironic, usually grim O. Henry sting in the final minute. Writer-producer J. Donald Wilson created the character and set its tone, and the show premiered May 16, 1942 on the CBS West Coast regional network, sponsored on the Pacific by Signal Oil. Bill Forman became the longest-tenured narrator, though the role passed through Gale Gordon, Joseph Kearns, Marvin Miller, and others; the stock company drew on William Conrad, Lurene Tuttle, and Jack Webb. In a singular 1948 episode, a sponsor dispute led CBS to broadcast two entirely separate productions at once -- different scripts, stars, and directors for western and eastern audiences. The theme was composed by Wilbur Hatch and whistled by Dorothy Roberts. Running thirteen years to 1955, The Whistler was a defining example of the ironic "crime-does-not-pay" anthology, and a rare radio property to cross into both film -- eight Columbia Pictures features -- and a 1954 TV series. Jack Benny parodied it as "I Am the Fiddler," and its narration even drifts across a car radio in the 1990 noir The Two Jakes.
Collection status:
534 of 720 held (74% complete)
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Episode Spine
Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.
- 1942 (33 episodes)
- 1943 (51 episodes)
- 1944 (51 episodes)
- 1945 (53 episodes)
- 1946 (55 episodes)
- 1947 (72 episodes)
- 1948 (56 episodes)
- 1949 (52 episodes)
- 1950 (53 episodes)
- 1951 (52 episodes)
- 1952 (52 episodes)
- 1953 (50 episodes)
- 1954 (52 episodes)
- 1955 (38 episodes)
1942
An axe-murderer who killed his wife and stepson for her hidden cash breaks out of prison and returns to the eerie old house to dig up the money -- but the house has plans of its own.
May 23, 1942
Release
May 30, 1942
Song of the Sea
June 6, 1942
Eye of the Storm
A young heiress crosses the country to live with the crippled uncle she has never met, and finds his mansion, his secretary, and his collection of shrunken heads stranger than she bargained for.
June 20, 1942
Curse
An airplane-plant official is being driven toward madness -- and murder -- by something that stalks his sleep in the lonely house during the nightly storms.
July 4, 1942
The Curse
July 11, 1942
The Draught of the Death
July 18, 1942
Cold Fury
July 25, 1942
Voice in the Dark
August 1, 1942
Gray Gables
August 8, 1942
The Ghost Light
August 15, 1942
The Boomerang
Marooned on a desert island, a love triangle curdles into madness and drink.
Is Hans Minkler an Austrian fighting the Nazis, or a Nazi himself? An espionage puzzle set in a Europe sliding toward war.
A good-natured man, cheated and cornered by his grasping relatives, comes to suspect he is marked for murder -- and hatches an idea of his own.
A rising attorney owes his law degree to the nightclub owner who bankrolled it, so his engagement to the DA's daughter unleashes a jilted woman's fury.
A fisherman surfaces from a spell of amnesia to learn he has killed an enemy -- with no memory of the deed.
Convinced her husband means to murder her for another woman, an ailing wife resolves to strike first.
As wartime production pressure mounts, a factory owner's blackout spells grow more frequent -- and more dangerous to the partner who trusts him.
Dr. Benton is bent on grooming one son to inherit his surgery; the boy's rebellion, and a shared attraction to a girl he deems beneath them, drives the household to ruin.
A manufacturer whose conscience is clean dreams that death will find him in two days' time, and the hours start proving the dream right.
Twenty years under his rich, domineering wife's thumb have left a failed artist with nothing -- and several people around her with reason to want her dead.
November 1, 1942
If I Should Die
November 8, 1942
Unknown Journey
As a dying widow's relatives circle her fortune, her late husband's ghost returns with firm opinions about how the estate should be divided.
Facing divorce, a scorned wife plots revenge on the secretary she blames for stealing her husband.
A gambler who married into money is deep in debt to the wrong people, and his suspicious wealthy wife may be his only way out -- with a little help from arsenic.
December 6, 1942
?? Title Unknown ??
A ne'er-do-well bank clerk has embezzled from the till, and his equally shady stepfather refuses to cover for him as a surprise audit looms.
December 20, 1942
?? Title Unknown ??
On Christmas Eve, a reformed ex-con living with his detective brother-in-law becomes the prime suspect in a robbery.
1943
An honest district attorney faces an impossible choice when the evidence in a murder points straight at his own spineless son.
A magician and hypnotist is pressed into a five-day errand to recover a fortune, shadowed by a prophecy that his great career is about to end.
A woman meets, for the first time, the grown son she gave up years before -- in a story that twists around them both.
A man receives telepathic pleas from an author he has never met, and his hunt for the missing manuscript turns up fresh graves and screams in the night.
A celebrated defense attorney who has never lost a case clashes with a gangster -- who then turns up stabbed to death with a letter opener.
Aboard their yacht, a blind shipbuilder and his unfaithful wife play out a deadly game.
A young woman fears she has inherited her family's murderous streak -- or has someone convinced her that she has?
A meek bank clerk, fired after twenty years, is certain his flawless scheme will net him $50,000 and a new life on a Brazilian beach.
February 28, 1943
?? Title Unknown ??
March 7, 1943
Purely Coincidental
March 14, 1943
The Trap
March 21, 1943
Death at Dawn
A dying rich man pays a struggling lawyer to draft a secret will, drawing the attorney into a tangle involving the man's twin brother.
April 4, 1943
Swamp Rats
April 11, 1943
Five Bullets
April 18, 1943
Voice of Death
An axe-murderer judged insane escapes custody and turns up alone with three women and a thousand dollars on an isolated farm.
A restaging of the desert-island triangle that spirals into madness and drink.
A cruel New England matriarch opposes her son's every romance, so his sudden attraction to her new secretary-companion may prove fatal.
May 22, 1943
Man from India
A hunting trip in a lonely canyon ends in a gunshot -- and a death that was no accident.
A retired brain surgeon experimenting with tissue transplants is strangely determined that his daughter never marry.
On a wartime Midwest farm, an aging widower's young city bride and his eccentric son become entangled in a triangle laced with arsenic.
In an abandoned villa, a love triangle collapses into bloodshed.
A desperate man paces his office, racing time itself against a blank wall he cannot get past.
A miner, murdered and buried, returns from the grave to take his revenge on the brother who wronged him.
A scientist lures four suspects in his brother's murder onto his yacht and vows none will reach land until one confesses -- amid corpses and time bombs.
July 23, 1943
?? Title Unknown ??
July 30, 1943
Necrophobia
August 6, 1943
Partners in Crime
A gangster frames one of his own men and sends the man's wife to prison, but the double-cross circles back on him.
August 27, 1943
Summer Night
A newly jobless bookkeeper heads west to buy into a mine and lands squarely between a $10,000 windfall and a lynch mob.
A wealthy widow's plan to keep her fortune in the family by marrying off her two wards founders when each already loves someone else.
A weak, wealthy young man kills someone while driving drunk, and a supposed friend turns the accident into blackmail.
A restaging of the tale of a lawyer, the nightclub owner who made him, and the woman scorned when he marries elsewhere.
October 10, 1943
As the Chimes Rang
October 17, 1943
Draught of Death
October 24, 1943
A Woman and a House
October 31, 1943
Circumstance
November 7, 1943
The Urge
November 14, 1943
The Best Laid Plans
Stranded by a snowstorm, travelers take shelter with a man who believes he is a doctor -- and his very strange family.
December 5, 1943
The Twin
December 12, 1943
Devil Goes to Paradise
A couple caught in a storm shelter with a strange old woman and her son, who, it emerges, have been dead for ten years.
December 26, 1943
Murder Has an Alibi
1944
January 2, 1944
Satan Holds 5 Aces
January 9, 1944
Death Sets a Trap
January 16, 1944
Time Out for Murder
January 23, 1944
Guilded Trap
January 30, 1944
Obsession
February 6, 1944
Devil's Trap
February 13, 1944
Murder in the Mind
February 20, 1944
According to Desire
March 5, 1944
Background for Murder
March 12, 1944
Lisbon Adventure
March 19, 1944
The Ordeal
March 26, 1944
Death Leaves a Legacy
April 2, 1944
The Barrier
April 9, 1944
Detour to Death
April 16, 1944
The Corpse Walked In
April 23, 1944
Death Has a Double
April 30, 1944
Voice from Beyond
May 7, 1944
Seven Guests for Dinner
May 14, 1944
Lady Courts Death
May 21, 1944
Death Wears a Halo
May 28, 1944
African Interlude
Guest host Peter Lorre introduces a mad professor whose grim theory holds that anyone on the verge of suicide can be pushed into becoming a murderer.
June 18, 1944
?? Title Unknown ??
June 25, 1944
?? Title Unknown ??
July 2, 1944
?? Title Unknown ??
July 9, 1944
Road Without Turning
July 16, 1944
?? Title Unknown ??
A dying aristocrat lays a curse on the ruthless newcomer who has foreclosed on his family's old Louisiana bayou plantation.
A crooked art dealer peddles forged manuscripts to a dying man's wife -- who knows they are fakes and gladly overpays anyway.
August 6, 1944
?? Title Unknown ??
August 27, 1944
Opus 32
Two robbers running a respectable lending library plot to force a dwarf into pulling off a heist against his will.
In a lonely Devon village, a sharp-tongued invalid becomes convinced her masseur means to kill her -- or does she?
At a malaria-stricken mine in equatorial Africa, the manager's old flame arrives as the new doctor's wife, and the eternal triangle turns deadly.
A woman weds an artist moments after he kills his girlfriend, hungry to share a life with a murderer -- and dreaming of bigger thrills yet.
A killer's foolproof alibi hinges on an actor who is his exact double, until the deadly game turns back on him.
A frantic six-day search for a missing heiress across New York builds to a surprise finish.
Suicide or murder? A $100,000 fortune rides on which answer the dead man's tale finally reveals.
Lured by money, an ordinary man agrees to plant a bomb in a war plant for a stranger with a foreign accent -- and cannot shake the jitters.
Constance, thirty-five and dominated by her tyrannical sister Emma, can only wonder whether her suitor's love is genuine.
Two grifters wed each other by mistake, each believing the other rich, and when the money proves imaginary the husband's eye drifts to what her death would pay out.
A woman murders her identical twin and takes over her life, only to find that being her sister is nothing like she imagined.
Behind the circus's cheerful bustle, a broken-down aerialist nurses a grudge toward the daughter of the man whose act once cost him his son.
A gangster has a plastic surgeon change his face -- and is then forced to keep paying for the operation for the rest of his life.
A veteran narcotics detective is framed for his partner's shooting in a blackened alley, with every clue pointing straight at him.
A man impatiently counts the days until his wealthy eighty-year-old Uncle Mike finally dies and leaves him the fortune.
Fired from a department store after $10,000 goes missing, an ex-convict figures he might as well steal for real -- until a music box turns his luck (a rare Whistler happy ending, aired Christmas Day).
1945
A luckless gambler's revenge on his cab-driver brother takes the form of $25,000 left waiting in the back seat of the taxi.
A murdered nightclub beauty seems to return from the dead for revenge, in a case the Whistler's own explanation only deepens.
A miserly woman's downtrodden servant finally revolts and kills her -- then a greedy distant relative and his wife try their own hand at murder.
Marooned in a lighthouse with the keeper and a wife who has just owned up to a killing, a shipwrecked former lover makes for very uneasy company.
A gambling writer who married a plain heiress for her money runs up a debt to a gangster, and a convertible soon goes off a cliff.
A lawyer wins his client's acquittal while secretly in love with the man's wife, and a contract of death follows.
February 12, 1945
Belle of Aberdovey
Cheated of his stake in a construction firm, a man plots a flawless killing on the theory that a corpse can never stand trial.
When a convict breaks out of prison to kill the district attorney, the DA's own assistant proves to have a surprising link to the plot.
A man is picked up off the street by a beautiful, wealthy woman and finds himself walking straight into murder.
After a jewelry heist, one of three thieves is double-crossing the other two, and only a drugstore pay phone knows which.
Murder is hatched in a chain-drugstore phone booth as a small-time racketeer makes one fateful call.
March 26, 1945
Checkmate for Murder
On the eve of his release after ten years, a model prisoner listens to the chaplain praise the good he has done -- while his real plans wait outside the walls.
April 9, 1945
Jaws of Death
Assigned to an escaped killer's manhunt, a reporter turns up at an isolated farmhouse, a lovely stranger, and a fresh corpse.
A cash-strapped drugstore clerk is offered $5,000 to poison a newspaperman, and realizes too late that he may have been overheard.
Five years after a man vanished from an English village, the woman who loved him comes home -- and the tree in the garden holds a secret.
A man consumed with jealousy of his more successful co-worker rigs a fatal railroad accident, which derails in a way he never intended.
A boy from the wrong side of town lets his love for his childhood sweetheart push him from petty theft into counterfeiting, with surprising results.
A Nazi war criminal steals the identity of an American who died in his prison camp, then finds America is not the haven he imagined.
Rejected, a woman fakes blindness so that if she cannot keep her lover, no bride ever will.
A bank clerk desperate to cover a $10,000 shortage sees his answer arrive when his cheerful cousin turns up for the weekend carrying exactly that in cash.
The wife of a beloved comedian sets out to convince him that, no longer in his right mind, he ought to take his own life.
Haunted by a dream of killing his troublesome mistress so vivid he believes it real, a man returns to the scene to prove to himself he did not.
A meek bookkeeper devises an elaborate plan to murder his longtime rival and take both his job and his wife.
Trapped at a desert tourist camp with her brutish stepfather, a young woman finally kills him and flees across the sands with the first driver who stops.
After threatening a rival, a man comes to behind the wheel of a car with a policeman beside him and a body in the back seat.
Bent on killing Alan, a cold beauty weds the guileless George expressly so the crime can be hung on him.
During a sweltering British storm, a woman convinced her lover has committed murder tries to help by destroying the evidence -- a very bad idea.
A nephew who has been quietly robbing his invalid aunt must act fast when she starts to recover and might discover the theft.
A drab, respectable stockbroker chucks his humdrum life for romance in Florida, and the right pressures steadily turn him toward murder.
An ordinary housewife's theory about a baffling, motiveless string of killings may be the only thing that cracks the case.
A meek book salesman, mistaken for a marked man by killers, agrees to murder their real target to save his own life.
An ambitious politician thinks hiring the very man he once helped imprison will burnish his image.
A woman is on the telephone with her best friend at the very moment the friend is murdered -- or was she?
A pop idol desperate to escape his greedy manager's contract sings a deadly song of his own.
$400,000 proves there is no honor among thieves.
Two women who despise each other are snowed in alone at a mountain cabin, with murder simmering between them.
A man faces the near-impossible task of retrieving a damning letter he mailed to a newspaper before it can be delivered.
A weak man and his wife rent a house where $50,000 is hidden in an old clock -- but a scar-faced man wants it too.
A ruthlessly ambitious woman who drives her man to the top makes the final sacrifice.
On the hundredth broadcast, murder comes to a prosperous farm where the longtime hired hand has grown a little too much like family.
A sea captain's strange bond with his first mate drives the slighted second mate to swear a peculiar revenge -- and get it.
Coincidence becomes a murder weapon in the hands of a woman avenging the sister who killed herself over a man's rejection.
A reporter dabbling in a murder begins having strange dreams -- and then his wife starts having the very same ones.
A cockney poisons his wife and stages it as suicide using the shopping list from her own murder-mystery novel.
Owning just ten percent of an Arizona gold strike, a young metallurgist eyes the other ninety -- and a cistern where a body will never be found.
A greed-obsessed couple find a roll of bills on a corpse and go off the deep end, while their mysterious boarder looks quietly on.
December 24, 1945
Right from the Heart
Cornered for gunning down a policeman, a fugitive spots his salvation across a drugstore counter: a stranger who could pass for his twin.
1946
A man who married an old woman for her money finds himself in love with her young companion, and the thin line between infatuation and hate.
Fleeing her husband with another man, a woman runs down a pedestrian on the road -- her own husband.
Old Grandpa Randolph dies having hidden $200,000, leaving only a cryptic clue to where the fortune lies.
Hatred, jealousy, and murder plots -- just another day for one very strange family.
A body in a trunk and a desperate escape by sea.
A college professor's failing marriage climaxes on a foggy night when he finds his wife dead beside her crossword -- and the body will not stay put.
February 18, 1946
The Croupier's Wife
A man murders his wealthy wife in Florida and, with a suspicious detective shadowing him north, swaps identities with a famous mystery writer.
A doctor is torn between a beautiful woman, her gravely ill husband, and his Hippocratic oath.
Months after the 'Doorbell Killer' is executed, the one couple who knew the case's real secret can never tell -- and a woman heard only in her final scream haunts the tale.
A man schemes to poison his rich wife, using a phonograph record of typing to keep his hotel room from being disturbed.
The lawyer for the town's biggest crook realizes he is the only witness who can convict his own client.
A wife given every opportunity to kill her husband finds him frustrating her every attempt.
Freed after ten years, a man wages a slow campaign of fear against the accountant whose testimony sent him to prison.
A ring of blackmailers plots murder and a tangle of double-crosses, each hunting an alibi for the killing to come.
A family seething with hatred and jealousy has a large inheritance on the way -- just to sharpen the knives.
Uncle Harvey signs whatever is put before him without reading it, so the trick becomes getting the concert pianist to autograph a suicide note.
May 13, 1946
Mister Bidderoe's Mission
Arnold drowns his wife in the tub, only to have her ring his office afterward, alive and well.
May 27, 1946
?? Title Unknown ??
A movie star whose million-dollar looks are ruined in an accident plans a murder and must face the music.
Torn between the wife he resents and the woman he wants, Henry ends his quiet Sunday with a corpse in the trunk.
A jilted woman returns to her family's backwoods farm, where murder, conflict, and hidden money await.
Having quietly done away with his partner, a casino boss must now keep his richest customer contented and breathing, though only just.
A dignified financial manager, desperate for $9,500, murders the wealthy Boston widow who trusts him and steals her valuable earring.
Given three months to live and refused insurance, a man is offered $10,000 to hand over his wife -- and confess to a killing.
A thief lures a rich blonde out of a bar for her diamonds, but the setup goes wrong when she starts shooting.
A man who plans everything -- business, marriage, murder -- meets a detective named Conrad in a case of divorce, blackmail, and mismatched bullets.
A man steals his dying best friend's unpublished novel, reasoning the friend will not be around to notice.
Rather than let his wife walk out, Philip Linden silences her for good and crates the evidence off toward a mountain hideaway.
A husband is sure he has done away with his wife -- then gets word from her at the office.
A respectable businessman finally drowns the helplessly dependent wife he can no longer bear -- and then she phones him, alive.
After six years waiting for word of her brother, a woman greets his return -- and realizes the man is an impostor.
September 4, 1946
Where the Lines Cross
A columnist who plans his life to the minute commits a methodical murder -- in front of one silent witness.
A millionaire marries a carnival dancer and leaves her his fortune, so a roller coaster and an unbuckled seatbelt do the rest.
September 23, 1946
The Victim Smiled
September 30, 1946
The Man Who Never Was
Cast aside by the lovely young partner half his age, a fading hoofer convinces himself he has found the flawless way out.
When a poisoned old captain is buried, the sheriff sets his eye on two timid old-maid sisters and their peaches.
A murder and a woman on the run play out around a hidden casino (the show opens with Jack Benny's 'Fiddler' parody).
A chauffeur murders his wealthy employer and pins the crime on his two-timing mistress.
November 4, 1946
Return to the Sender
After long deliberation, Millie Parker chooses a rich life on the run over honest poverty, and crosses the line.
November 18, 1946
Kind Thought
A lawyer spends two patient years maneuvering a beautiful young woman into marrying his rich, elderly client -- and inheriting.
The Chicago version: cheated of his wife's inheritance when her father recovers, a husband gets a deadly idea atop a mule in the Grand Canyon.
The one killing a vacationing woman swears she saw points to the police commissioner himself, and then the supposed victim walks in very much alive.
December 16, 1946
?? Title Unknown ??
A newspaper editor working late on the Christmas edition proves to be prisoner number 56084, biding his time.
The killing on Rourke Island springs not from malice but from Keith Brandon's love for a young woman, Cathy Dunn.
1947
A tense, near-silent dinner between husband and wife hides a dread that neither will name.
A Chinatown tale of forgery and murder builds to a shot fired from a rooftop.
For an aging star, murdering her husband is staged like a scene she has run a hundred times, until the double-cross turns on her.
After doing away with his wife, a man hides the corpse in the building's elevator, and is unnerved when it will not stay where he left it.
A feud between a drama critic and a playwright escalates, step by step, to murder.
Murder aboard a gambling ship, with the dead man locked inside the safe.
The East Coast retelling of the critic-and-playwright feud that ends in murder.
Two dishonest art dealers are outfoxed by a brilliant Italian forger.
A crime reporter fired from his paper kills his old boss, then must silence an innocent witness, and needs an airtight alibi.
A schemer talks his way into half of a rich Alaskan gold mine, then gets the germ of an idea for murder.
Jealousy and murder play out along Broadway's Great White Way.
March 12, 1947
A Woman's Privilege
A spotlight-hungry bank clerk chasing high society is pulled into a sandwich-shop holdup and murder, then strikes a bargain with the gunman.
March 19, 1947
Miracle on 49th Street
A killing in Omaha, a westbound train, and a fortune in smuggled diamonds all come down to one woman and the key she carries.
March 26, 1947
Lady with a Knife
A reformed convict watches his daughter's society wedding draw near, just as the household butler decides it is a fine moment to demand hush money.
The Pacific retelling of the critic-and-playwright feud that ends in murder.
A man kills the clinging woman who threatens his wife's half-million inheritance, claiming he never left his bedroom for a week.
April 9, 1947
Sheriff's Assistant
A radio actress murders her rival on the eve of the woman's wedding -- and is stunned to see her own lover charged with the crime.
April 16, 1947
Maid of Honor
George despised his Aunt Irene and wanted her dead, so when she is murdered his alibi simply will not hold.
April 23, 1947
Backlash
Basking in a triumphant opening, a dancer learns the ballerina whose career he wrecked means to even the score, so he resolves to silence her first.
April 30, 1947
Black Book
Poised to jump from a bridge, a man instead finds a body below and, on it, a checkbook flush with $104,000.
May 7, 1947
Windfall
A mild-mannered teacher takes a quiet house by the shore, all the while laying meticulous plans to be rid of his wife.
May 14, 1947
18 Burden Lane
A professor tries a little blackmail after discovering his department head plagiarized a dead graduate student's research.
May 21, 1947
Hasty Conclusion
A mild accountant finds $40,000 through a mailbox mix-up, and a murder follows when the rightful owner upstairs will not let it go.
May 28, 1947
Fateful Friday
A gangster who suspects his wife of an affair resolves to kill her lover -- a dangerous plan for a hemophiliac.
June 4, 1947
Caesar's Wife
A quiet town still winces at the night of mob violence stirred by its most beloved citizen, 'Uncle Josh,' who had his own motives.
June 11, 1947
Judgement
Murder invades the diplomatic service, delivered as poisoned Roquefort in the diplomatic pouch.
June 18, 1947
Ambassador of Death
A researcher poisons a colleague's mind to make the man do his murderous work for him.
June 25, 1947
The Gentle Way
July 2, 1947
The Big Pitch
Racing through the night, Colby Fletcher spots a lone walker and sees the last piece of his plan to vanish by faking his own death.
Having stabbed the man extorting her, a rich woman is then seated on the jury judging an innocent accused of the deed.
July 23, 1947
Stolen Empire
A Singapore correspondent paid $50,000 to plant a false story is fired before he can file it, and decides to murder his replacement.
Flush with $30,000 in stolen bills, a man cannot shake the dread stirred by a carnival seer, one blind to the murder waiting in his own future.
Acquitted of murder but still whispered about by the town, a woman decides to frame the gardener to silence the gossip.
A fading movie star sets her sights on marrying a wealthy admirer -- if his sister does not stop her first.
On the Broadway boards, an actor flirts with real death, then steps back into the footlights to accept the applause.
A British workingman romances a rich woman on his wife's savings, and a foregone-conclusion murder trial springs a surprise.
Facing dismissal over a padded expense account, a museum man adds a killing to the collection.
September 17, 1947
Death and the Emperor
A woman jealous of her employer and the woman's prize Persian cat plots a foolproof murder with catnip and a loose gas jet.
As a tearoom seer's prophecy edges toward truth, a bride-to-be grasps that her scientist fiance has made her the test subject for his sleeping-sickness serum.
October 1, 1947
The Other Hand
An ambitious businessman delivers a stirring speech on safe driving, then is promptly caught in a hit-and-run, followed by blackmail and murder.
Sure he has found a gullible buyer for a faked Renaissance cabinet, a smooth antiques dealer has picked precisely the wrong mark.
Tried for murdering the wife who denied him a divorce, a shrewd lawyer mounts almost no defense at all -- for a reason all his own.
Murder at an isolated Alaskan hunting lodge replays in a man's mind as he attempts a desperate escape.
November 12, 1947
Stolen Chance
A draftsman putting on a big front while awaiting promotion commits murder to steal the invention he is working on.
A long-struggling actor's big break arrives at last, and only his ex-wife stands between him and the role.
A body floats up carrying a five-thousand-pound cheque -- killed by a fountain pen.
December 3, 1947
Professor and the Fox
A man steered into a club bar by a colleague is drawn toward an astonishing death by fire-extinguisher fumes.
On the eve of her wedding to John Gray, Chris's happiness is shattered when Marion suddenly appears.
A man murders his wealthy Florida wife and, tailed north by a suspicious detective, takes on the identity of a famous mystery writer.
A doctor covers for the woman he suspects poisoned her angina-stricken husband -- a decision beyond logic.
A young couple plans to marry against the wishes of a shrewd, wealthy uncle who knows human nature all too well.
1948
A recovering alcoholic actor gets one last shot at a Broadway comeback, until his scheming understudy nudges him off the wagon and toward murder.
On a modern dairy ranch, a bitter quarrel between partners curdles into a Grade-A killing.
Desperate for publicity, a painter guns down his model and dresses it up as suicide, then a strange dealer turns up with a stranger scheme.
A hard-bitten woman reporter, newly divorced and rejected by her boyfriend, is swept into a murder accusation and a night at the circus.
A love affair struck up while swimming off Cape Ann turns into a plotted offshore murder and a double-double-cross.
A man with two wives concludes that only killing can free him of one of them.
A bookshop clerk offers to aid a reporter crusading against 'Murder Incorporated' -- for a reason that clinches the tale.
A real-estate man his wife made successful reaches his boiling point over another woman, a bridge, and murder.
A washed-up actor whose career was killed by ten inches of newsprint plots a very personal return engagement.
A lovesick teenager sets off a chain of events leading to murder, and stays untouched herself.
A brilliant attorney who just won a forger's acquittal may have killed the prosecutor -- or has he?
A desperate journalist hunts the reclusive Havana author J.C. Raven, and with a talented secretary's help sets out to assume the writer's identity.
A drab, respectable stockbroker throws over his humdrum life for romance in Florida, and the right pressures turn him toward murder.
The wife of a dying man knowingly overpays a swindling dealer for manuscripts she is well aware are forgeries.
A blocked novelist stumbles on an unknown writer's masterpiece and decides the surest byline is one whose author is dead.
Ten years after his glory days, a flyer comes back to a sweltering South American town and gets a decidedly unwelcome reception.
A woman tangled up with a criminal sentenced to twenty years watches large sums change hands, and a murder follow.
A pilot takes a Caribbean salvage job offered by the husband of the woman he loves, and learns how close love runs to hate.
A philandering stockbroker double-crossed by his girlfriend comes to on a park bench with murder flooding back.
May 26, 1948
Bird of Prey
The heir who comes back for his share is met with cold certainty by his step-sister: this man, she insists, is a fraud.
June 9, 1948
Brass Ring
A violinist murders to possess a priceless instrument, and on the brink of fame is dogged by an odd little figure in a striped suit.
June 30, 1948
Silent City
A con man out for a big score with his old cellmate falls for his friend's girl, and does not reckon on an unusual roommate.
A businessman takes $50,000 in exchange for agreeing to be killed within two years, and slowly realizes whose story it really is.
July 21, 1948
Fatal Appointment
A woman plans to murder her husband and start over with her music teacher, choosing a departing ocean liner as the ideal place.
A Hollywood star is thrown into panic when an old cafe is set for demolition and its contents auctioned -- for a very good reason.
A new bride slowly, like a gathering storm, uncovers what became of her husband's first wife.
The 'Strangler,' who usually favors a silk stocking, this time reaches for a piece of rope -- and for a grieving painter.
August 18, 1948
A Question of Murder
Moving into a dead man's flat, a fellow turns up $35,000 in cash -- and then the previous tenant, who proves to be very much breathing.
A crooked politician is blackmailed by his equally crooked secretary and her crooked boyfriend.
A criminal lawyer who murdered his wife ends up defending the very man he set up for it.
An auto accident hands a woman a profitable idea, until a blackmailer turns up with ideas of his own.
An odd woman commissions her portrait just as a stroke leaves her husband paralyzed and she can no longer walk.
While reporting on an approaching flood, a newsman turns the looming catastrophe into cover for killing the ex-wife he despises.
Twin foals are bred to be a winner and a loser, while Sergeant Joe Friday works to break up a roving gambling ring.
Pulled from a wreck, a dazed survivor is talked into passing himself off as a shrewd woman's husband for a cut of the money.
Two women vie for the same doctor; the wealthy, ruthless one holds the advantage, but the other holds her sedatives.
Three strangers are marked for death, and the puzzle is what connects them.
A hardware dealer who broke out of prison decades ago is cornered by his son-in-law's blackmailing butler.
When her estranged sister is found a suicide, a woman fears the man they both loved may be responsible.
A fleeing bank embezzler hides out in a supposedly deserted estate that proves far from empty.
A beautiful new housekeeper quietly sows discord in a wealthy British couple's marriage.
An ex-con pianist takes a job at a tough gambler's lakeside resort and falls for the owner's wife, amid a knife fight and a wreck.
Fleeing an embezzlement charge, a man picks up a hitchhiking fugitive and dangles work at a lonely mine, with dark motives of his own.
A doctor's wife has a secret past known only to a drunken reporter, until the reporter's accident leaves the doctor the only man who can save him.
Bored on a snowbound cross-country train, a man falls in with a beautiful woman, a talkative reporter, and $100,000 marked for death.
A hostess in a Panama City cantina, safe for five quiet months, is pulled into a robbery and murder.
1949
A rooftop parking-lot announcer witnesses a policeman's murder and, instead of calling the law, tries a little blackmail.
A slick promoter stages a 'Frontier Week' in a sleepy former gold-rush town while romancing the leading citizen's fiancee.
A scheme to extort a valuable watch proves anything but profitable, thanks to a telltale engraving.
A timid New Haven professor, his marriage gone cold, is offered a fresh identity, a fortune, and a new life in Bermuda.
A nightclub singer married to an insanely jealous invalid plans to kill him by setting a fire while he sleeps.
A man needs $35,000 to be free of his scatterbrained rich wife -- and there is always the useful George Turner.
An aging prima donna, feeling the years, plots to disfigure her rising young rival.
A French girl hiding in a shabby bookshop lives in terror of the one man who wants her dead, and takes a strange interest in an accused Nazi.
An elderly couple murder their wealthy employer, then get a shock when the dead man's niece arrives from Australia.
A struggling reporter accidentally kills his drunken cousin while asking for a loan, then learns the death was overheard by phone.
Never blackmail a blackmailer -- a lesson played out on the ski slopes above a mountain lodge.
A convict called 'the Baron' hears words on visitor's day that hit him like an electric shock.
Down to her last few dollars in a Honolulu bar, a woman seizes a chance to pose as an heiress -- and the trouble that follows is easy to guess.
Who murdered Margo? The decisive evidence surfaces at exactly the wrong moment.
A scientist racing to cure sleeping sickness may have injected his own fiancee with a fatal dose, as a fortune-teller's words come true.
A man wakes after an explosion wearing a wealthy stranger's face, takes over his life, and is blackmailed by the surgeon who made it possible.
A fishing-village storekeeper uses murder to remove a rival for his girl, certain no one would ever suspect such a solid citizen.
A lonely young engineer is picked up off the street by a beautiful, wealthy woman -- and walks into murder.
A successful attorney kept afloat by his wife's money kills her, with predictable results.
In Hong Kong, a man who can mimic any voice is drawn into a plot to divert an airliner and its $250,000 cargo.
A jealous reporter hunts whoever tried to murder him -- the same rival who has designs on his wife.
A mine partner finally meets his pen-pal sweetheart, who turns out to be both beautiful and rich.
A washed-up, self-serving investigator figures a well-placed killing and a well-timed wedding can set him up for life.
Cast away on a Pacific island, a woman and three men face grim arithmetic: the sea home has room for only two.
A hunting-trip gunshot proves no accident in a tangled story of love, marriage, and murder.
A mild bookshop owner devises a theory of murders committed in alphabetical order -- and a chance to kill his beloved's obnoxious brother.
A prominent lawyer, quietly running rackets alongside his half-brother and smitten with the man's girl, still refuses to give him an alibi for murder.
A man films his girlfriend murdering his wife, in a scheme with several unexpected twists.
A man is sure his hermit friend still has the money he embezzled, and races the friend's visiting niece to find it.
Each week another note reaches a wealthy Egyptologist, promising that the murder he committed will be repaid on its grim anniversary.
A brilliant young lawyer builds a career on acquittals for a notorious gambler, until the payoff comes due.
A man does away with his lover and pins it on her husband -- who happens to be his own business partner.
A gangster on the run hides aboard a ship under a false name, undone by a doctor who knew him and by a coffin.
A chance bar encounter pulls a down-and-out drifter into a spiral of killing, extortion, and betrayal.
A schemer working a married man for blackmail cash cuts out her own accomplice, then finds someone has beaten her to her victim.
A microphone-weary announcer recruits an ex-convict from the engineering booth to help him be rid of his wife.
A maid in England schemes to make off with her mistress's paintings and let luckless Henry take the fall.
The pal a hauler trusts most is betraying him twice over: with his wife, and with a plot to hijack his rig.
When a gifted Italian forger turns up dead, the pair of thieving art dealers he served are left holding two of his fakes.
A young concert pianist's plan to quit and marry threatens to expose the $100,000 her guardians embezzled from her.
On the ice, a skating partner vows the rival will never wed the woman they both want, and the triangle turns lethal.
Prosperous and respectable, Morley Jackson buried his past -- and will do anything to pry an incriminating letter from the blackmailer who found it.
A lonely woman overhears a murder and a stolen $30,000 necklace, then meets the killer on the train and schemes to profit.
Having quietly poisoned his first wife without consequence, Mr. Devlin sees no reason the method should not serve for the second.
To be free of a former flame turned blackmailer, a man throttles her and hides what remains in a sea cave.
A clever scheme smuggles forged Aaron Burr letters out of prison via released inmates, until a paroled man catches on.
Aboard a transcontinental train, a bill-forger crosses paths with an enigmatic woman wearing stolen jewels and shadowed by two hard cases.
Stumbling on an abandoned car holding a dead man and $50,000 in stolen payroll, a lawyer is pressed by his girlfriend, for reasons of her own, to keep the cash.
A club singer plots to get rid of the tough who has muscled in on the Swan Club, from a bright, well-appointed apartment.
A sculptor with no gift of his own passes off a hired hand's work to charm an elderly patroness into signing over half her estate.
On Christmas Eve, an interning doctor must decide whether to save the life of the man he has every reason to hate.
1950
New Year's Eve gossip linking a professor to a lovely student curdles toward violence.
A man returns to a dusty Mexican village for a three-way fight over gold, with a surprise finish.
A deep-sea diver hunting sunken fortune brings up a fatal bottle of brandy instead.
In a car on a lonely marsh, a man turns a cold automatic over and over, unable to choose between killing his secretary and his wife.
A tycoon's secretary has skimmed $50,000, but it is the great man's wife who is playing the larger game.
A man helps a famous playwright freeze to death and passes off the dead man's last script as his own, then must kill again when a blackmailing actress threatens him.
Two partners forced down in the Mexican desert double-double-cross each other under a full moon.
A five-cent phone call sets off a spiral of blackmail and counter-blackmail in old San Francisco.
A husband confronting his wife's crushing gambling debt keeps an appointment that frames him for murder.
A carved Chinese elephant packed with smuggled diamonds slips out of reach after its intended recipient is killed.
A priceless X-ray in Paris, a portly schemer, and more double-crosses than one can count.
An assistant DA knifes a man aboard a Newport yacht -- and is seen by a professional blackmailer.
A cartoonist framed for murder takes a new identity, only to be blackmailed for it.
A hoodlum's roadside pickup ends with a dead girl, $5,000, and maybe far more.
Two divers in love with the same woman go down together after sunken treasure.
A couple's plot to kill his stepmother for the inheritance is foiled by the bodyguard she hires.
A man who married while drunk tries to drown his new wife at sea, then to leave her on the railroad tracks.
A stuntman pulls a Hollywood producer from danger and is left sourly underwhelmed by his thanks.
A smuggler kills his partner for their $25,000, then reads in the paper that the dead man was someone else entirely.
The wife of a city official pleads with him to break with the racketeers whose graft has bought their comfortable life.
In despair over her missing husband, a woman attempts suicide -- then is stunned by evidence he is alive, because she killed him herself.
May 28, 1950
The Steal
A gangster with a secret decides to kill his wife, and several plans backfire.
Caught after lifting $11,000 in his aunt's bonds to bury his market losses, a man concludes that only a killing can save him.
After killing off one blackmailer, a woman who runs a publishing house is cornered by a second -- this one smitten with her.
A man living a double life kills a blackmailer and is forced back into both his identities.
Torn between the wife he resents and the woman he wants, Henry ends his quiet Sunday with a corpse in the trunk.
A broke fortune-hunter weds a rich widow, and her lovely secretary soon turns his thoughts toward killing.
Having killed his own client, an attorney finds himself defending the dead man's daughter against the murder charge.
A man who witnessed a beachside murder beneath the cliffs sees a perfect chance to strike it rich.
A woman insists she saw a murder, but the killer is the police commissioner -- and the victim turns up alive.
An architect who killed his wife glimpses her face in a photograph, and more murders must follow.
August 13, 1950
Stolen Empire
Blackmailed over a secret eight years buried, a Broadway leading lady answers with two killings meant to bury it for good.
Murder aboard a cargo ship at sea, with another passenger waiting to take the dead man's place.
A loathsome chronicler of Hollywood's after-dark set finds the malice he scatters coming back tenfold.
A high-stakes shipboard chess game plays for a yacht, $100,000, and a beautiful woman.
A physician signs off on Mrs. Holbrook's death as suicide, but whispered gossip proves every bit as lethal as the truth.
A wounded London bank robber flees to a quiet village, where a frail old resident collects the reward in the strangest way imaginable.
The scheme to kill a rich old man hinges on a lovely nurse, and on what she has written in her private diary.
A ship-scuttling, jade-smuggling captain runs headlong into a whole crew of double-dealers.
Years after skipping town on the gang boss with $60,000, a former henchman must kill to keep the old outfit off his trail.
Five years ago Jeffrey sealed his victim inside the estate wall; now his aunt's plan to have it torn down threatens to give him up.
A professor divorces his wife to marry a novelist, and the discarded wife sets out to eliminate the new rival.
For all the familiar reasons, a husband resolves to kill his rich wife, unaware how closely the old friend who worships her is watching.
A man blackmails his old friends to afford marriage, and finding it works, decides to do it again.
A murderer returns to his hometown to try blackmail -- and another killing -- aboard a night train.
A down-and-out man's marriage of convenience turns into something more, with a surprise finish.
Over drinks with a chatty stranger in an Omaha lounge, a schemer angles for a slice of a quarter-million-dollar diamond haul.
A death-row convict watches the tower clock as his lawyer races to prove him innocent of his wife's murder.
If shooting a blackmailer will not do the job, perhaps a telephone dial will -- on a lonely road outside Seattle.
A Damon Runyon Christmas Eve at a certain 49th Street watering hole spins into one of the oddest yarns its proprietor ever heard.
A contented San Francisco man's past catches up when an old acquaintance turns up knowing his real name -- but the tale ends happily, for once.
1951
Fleeing her husband for another man, a woman runs down a pedestrian in the dark -- her own husband.
Fresh out of prison, a man joins a bank-robbery gang, then plots his own treachery when he learns they mean to double-cross him.
A schemer boards with the Randolph sisters to hunt the $200,000 said to be buried on their land.
A con man who lived by his wits stakes everything on the fortune old Grandpa Randolph hid before he died.
An Orient pilot deep in debt to 'Burma Charlie' plots to kill his co-pilot by sabotaging the oxygen supply.
A newspaper columnist claws her way to the top over the boss she pushed to his death.
A flood threatens the very building whose insurance premiums the crooked city treasurer pocketed.
A paroled convict out to get the man who framed him is himself marked for death by that man's girlfriend.
An embezzler robs and kills the man gathering proof against him, then flees past the caretaker straight into trouble.
A love triangle carries its jealousies up a mountainside, where a single climbing rope decides who comes back down.
An Australian radio operator arrives to visit an old friend and finds the man's body in his own sea trunk.
Certain his wife is unfaithful, a man sets out to murder her and lay the blame squarely on his business partner.
Little things -- cut-off conversations, odd phone calls -- push a husband to suspect his wife and partner, and toward murder.
A failing lumberyard owner's perfect murder is undone by a ten-year-old's school composition.
A crook returns to collect his $30,000 cut in diamonds from the old flame who wronged him.
A crooked businessman plants a time bomb on the plane carrying his partner to give evidence against him in Washington.
A woman who seems to be getting away with her husband's murder appears set to get away with a second one, in a strange close-knit household.
After fourteen years planning to marry her boss, a secretary sets out to sabotage his engagement to another woman.
At the swank Club Carlos, a co-owner readies poison for the woman competing for their partner's affection.
To be rid of the sister-in-law who wants his marriage wrecked, a man recruits a former convict for the killing.
A thief with $30,000 tries to slip out of Los Angeles by answering an ad for a ride to Seattle.
With a solid alibi in place, a man is rid of the wife he left -- but a gaunt stranger saw him slip away.
An advertising man turns a novelty, the car telephone, into the means of killing his partner on a storm-lashed canyon road.
A private eye picks up the wrong trench coat, stumbles onto a blackmail scheme, and falls for the victim.
Jealousy and murder on Broadway's Great White Way.
In the crumbling family mansion, a man schemes to do away with his aunt and hang the crime on an aging seaman.
A brilliant, arrogant architect commits a murder in front of one silent witness.
A shifty talent agent gambles a forgotten silent-era star's comeback on one outrageous publicity stunt.
A restless young engineer is picked up by a beautiful, wealthy woman -- and walks into murder.
Cheating on his rich wife, a man engineers a lethal 'mishap' for the friend who has learned too much.
Handed the run of a high-end jewelry shop, a gambler is dunned for a $10,000 debt at the worst possible moment.
August 19, 1951
Sequel to Death
A studio photographer in love with his boss tries to kill his rival -- and is hailed as a hero instead.
An escaped convict turned prosperous merchant is blackmailed on the eve of his daughter's wedding.
With his mistress bound for Brazil, a man judges the moment right to be rid of his wife.
September 23, 1951
The Third Grave
Competing for the same valuable bill of lading, two sharp operators size each other up aboard a train and strike an uneasy partnership.
October 7, 1951
Wedding Bouquet
Two partners kill their way toward the priceless dagger of Louis XIV.
Two double-crossers scheme over the contents of a Singapore safe-deposit box -- he has the papers, she has the key.
One prized volume is worth any price to a shady rare-book dealer, a corpse or two included.
An escaped murderer keeps one jump ahead of the law until an airplane offers a sure way out.
It begins with a woman flagging down a car on a rain-soaked midnight road and builds toward the death she wants her boyfriend to arrange for her rich husband.
November 18, 1951
Love Match
The old landmark tree on the Clay estate has kept a killing's secret buried among its roots.
A Seattle cop-killer returns to the old girlfriend holding his $50,000 -- and she has plans of her own.
A writer murders his secretary while supposedly resting in a sanitarium, until a nightclub photo places him at the scene.
A merchant sailor comes home to find his sweetheart married to a miserly lobster-boat captain -- and murder follows on the high seas.
In a shabby Panama City cantina on Christmas Eve, a chanteuse recounts how she came to be running from a gangster.
A crooked contractor kills the foreman about to expose him, then faces a night watchman with blackmail in mind.
1952
A man who married a rich widow for her money plots to kill both his wife and the brother-in-law onto his affair, so he can wed his secret lover.
January 13, 1952
Man from the Morgue
The disgraced son of a late mill owner returns to his West Coast hometown to claim his inheritance -- and must first 'prove' himself.
A Singapore correspondent paid $50,000 to plant a false story is fired before he can file it, and decides to murder his replacement.
A scheme to extort a valuable engraved watch proves anything but profitable.
A man becomes obsessed with the mystery of a woman who killed a man in a Panama alley -- and the little red book she keeps hidden.
A young concert pianist's plan to quit and marry threatens to expose the $100,000 her guardians embezzled from her.
A meticulous man tries to have his partner killed by a hired gun, then is forced to kill the killer.
Pulled from a wreck, a dazed survivor is talked into passing himself off as a shrewd woman's husband for a cut of the money.
A hit-and-run driver whose instinct is always to run makes try after try to break out of jail.
A swindler who killed twice to keep the loot from his last job is undone by a television quiz show.
A resort ski instructor angling to marry a wealthy guest is thrown when his German ex-wife turns up working as a waitress.
A man frames his stepbrother for murder, and three years later the stepbrother escapes prison for revenge.
A blackmailing lawyer fails to reckon with the unknown factor -- 'Element X.'
April 13, 1952
Prescription for Death
April 20, 1952
Respected Citizen
A young doctor is left to face the shame after his best friend flees a drunken auto crash.
A woman tangled up with a criminal sentenced to twenty years watches large sums change hands, and a murder follow.
Everything is a calculation of odds to a hustler -- including pocketing the winning lottery ticket a drunk let slip, then vanishing before the number is called.
On the run and posing as an elderly tourist's companion in Italy, a thief is slipped a costly necklace by a tour guide every bit as crooked.
A reclusive society wife is horrified to be blackmailed by the woman who once went to prison in her place.
A cheap detective hired to unmask a wife's lover pockets her pistol and sets her up once the husband turns up dead.
An old-time hoodlum trying to leave the life behind is run to ground by a former associate carrying troubles of his own.
June 22, 1952
The Way Out
A grounded, hard-up flyer smooth-talks his way into a $25,000 charter, and the betrayals climb as fast as the plane.
A city's political boss and newspaper publisher finds that love and politics are both played for keeps.
July 13, 1952
The Hunted
July 20, 1952
Perfect Secretary
Free on $10,000 bail, a gambler decides the way to shake the law is to kill a man who could pass for him.
An ex-con hunting $250,000 buried on a resort island learns he is not the only one after it.
Facing prison over $40,000 he gambled away, a Havana chemist throws in with a perilous woman to run smuggled cortisone.
August 17, 1952
Nice Boy
A woman who married for citizenship, planning to divorce and bring over her lover, is blackmailed -- and turns to a poisonous African plant.
August 31, 1952
Flight 13
A captain lost at sea twenty-five years ago washes up alive near his widow's home, dazed and speaking of an old shipwreck.
September 14, 1952
Framwork for Murder
September 21, 1952
The Deal
September 28, 1952
Reunion in Algiers
Like a chemical catalyst, a seventeen-year-old girl on a Miami Beach terrace sets off a violent reaction she never takes part in.
A man paces his living room, unable to look away from a large dark stain spreading across the carpet.
An assistant DA wins a conviction he knows is false to advance his career, after apparently killing the real culprit.
November 2, 1952
Perfect Alibi
November 9, 1952
Gentle Conspiracy
A rising attorney who owes his career to a nightclub owner unleashes a jilted woman's fury by marrying the DA's daughter.
A blast meant to be fatal leaves both his partner and the plans for a $50,000 invention intact, to a schemer's dismay.
A songwriter plots to murder his lyricist partner when both fall for the same girl, and the lyrics tell the tale.
December 7, 1952
Appointment on the High Seas
Fired from a department store after $10,000 goes missing, an ex-convict figures he might as well steal for real -- until a music box turns his luck.
1953
January 11, 1953
Smooth Operator
January 18, 1953
Alias John Kordo
February 1, 1953
Friction
February 8, 1953
The Choice
February 15, 1953
Eager Person
February 22, 1953
End of the Trail
March 1, 1953
Bushmaster
Having killed his own client, an attorney finds himself defending the dead man's daughter against the murder charge.
March 22, 1953
Evening Stroll
March 29, 1953
Return to Riondo
April 5, 1953
Black Satchell
April 12, 1953
Impulse
April 26, 1953
Money Talks
A stage conjurer who moonlights forging money attempts a double killing and nearly deceives everyone.
May 10, 1953
Lady with a Key
May 17, 1953
Berwick Incident
May 24, 1953
When Old Friends Meet
May 31, 1953
Hall of Mirrors
June 14, 1953
Look in the Window
June 21, 1953
Next Stop Maple Street
June 28, 1953
Breakout
A struggling theatrical agent is the only witness who can identify a coin dealer's killer -- and the murderer means to silence him.
July 12, 1953
Act of Kindness
Hounded for a $2,000 gambling debt, a desperate woman finds the money from pawning her silver service nowhere near enough.
July 26, 1953
Ten Cent Call
August 2, 1953
Death of a Clown
August 9, 1953
Kickback
August 23, 1953
Red, Hot and Cold
September 13, 1953
Seventh Year
September 20, 1953
Two and One Makes Murder
September 27, 1953
Roadblock
A double-double-cross over $100,000 in insurance money erupts when a widow learns her supposedly dead husband is alive.
A killing in an out-of-the-way bungalow, a briefcase carried off by a beautiful woman, and a cab driver greedy enough to insert himself into the aftermath.
An actress at the end of her rope takes an odd escort job and winds up beside an escaped convict.
October 25, 1953
Murder Over Burma
November 1, 1953
Lady with Plans
A dull English professor is handed the chance to step into another man's life -- and a new future in Bermuda -- but nothing is quite as it seems.
A fading romantic film star schemes to frame a rising rival, and when that fails, writes a little murder into the script.
A counterfeiter back from exile is shot by his own girlfriend, who reaches the deserted rendezvous to find she is not the only one after the plates.
A German woman posing as an Argentine sets out to marry a fabulously wealthy American, until an island artist complicates the scheme.
An artist taken in and employed by a grateful millionaire proves far less honorable than he appeared.
December 13, 1953
Rooftop Big Shot
Given two months to cover what she stole, a secretary running her boss's affairs while he is abroad flies to Vegas and snares a millionaire.
A haulage boss guns down his partner only to watch the man drive off in the rig, and a bystander who tries to cash in on what he saw is quietly removed.
1954
January 3, 1954
Squeeze Play
In Hong Kong, a man who can mimic any voice is drawn into a plot to divert an airliner and its $250,000 cargo.
January 17, 1954
The Set Up
A Broadway producer broke after two flops fakes a jewelry robbery to bankroll his next play, and rings down the curtain with his wife's murder.
A nightclub co-owner schemes to make the club's hot-headed Latin dancer jealous enough to threaten -- and remove -- his partner.
In the London fog, an expatriate American who has killed for money holds the forged travel papers a shadowy figure is hunting -- while a Scotland Yard man takes a room down the hall.
February 14, 1954
Helping Hand
February 21, 1954
Forgotten City
An embezzler hunting the $75,000 his late prison acquaintance hid gets a shock at the funeral home -- the man in the casket is not who he expected.
A diplomat from abroad is shot by mistake at a secluded lodge, risking a global crisis and upending a scheming aide's plans.
A confidence man out to steal a wealthy widow's necklace throws over his partner posing as his sister when the widow falls for him.
Convinced he has killed an unknown woman in a high-rise apartment, a man runs to a friend who proves to be the actual murderer.
April 4, 1954
Tell Tale Hedges
April 11, 1954
Time and the Place
After her father dies and his young widow weds the attorney behind the will, a woman becomes sure the two killed him and mean to kill her.
A newspaper columnist claws her way to the top over the boss she pushed to his death.
May 2, 1954
Cardboard Fortune
A penniless Oxford man loses his heart to a gangster's girl -- the tough guy's sole heir.
A jeweler's secretary, in love with her married employer, comes to see his gravely ill wife as the last thing standing in her way.
A woman scrambling to cover $4,000 she embezzled comes into one of the dolls being used to smuggle diamonds, and finds one is not nearly enough.
The buried truth about why he settled in Cutlerville catches up with a onetime private eye when a woman from Seattle recognizes him.
A woman overhears a murder and a fortune in a Kansas City hotel, then deals herself in as the killer's partner.
A woman and her lover blow up her business partner's boat for the inheritance, but the body is never found.
June 20, 1954
Thirteen Black
June 27, 1954
Reluctant Witness
July 4, 1954
Man on the Stairway
The classic trunk murder, with complications, in a hot and crooked corner of jolly England.
A company treasurer's to-do list: rob the firm, win the boss's daughter, and get rid of his roommate.
Certain his rich uncle's check is on the way, a man quietly dips into the payroll for $10,000 -- then the uncle is in a crash.
August 8, 1954
Information Witheld
August 15, 1954
Perilous Retainer
On a foggy day in Pisa, a stranger slips a valuable necklace into a woman's pocket, and a jewel-thief partnership ends in murder.
Aunt Agnes means to tear down the old wall, and only sleeping powders in her cocoa can stop her -- because of what the wall hides.
September 5, 1954
Smash-Up
A songwriter's growing hatred of his lyricist partner boils over when both love the same girl.
September 26, 1954
End of the Road
A dying man's letter naming his niece sole heir vanishes, leaving her the prime suspect when he is poisoned before changing his will.
A gangster hiding aboard an ocean liner under a false name leaves the ship -- in a coffin.
October 24, 1954
The Pavillion
October 31, 1954
The Hangtree Affair
November 7, 1954
Old Hackett House
November 14, 1954
Murder at Twin Pines
November 21, 1954
Clayton Affair
November 28, 1954
Seattle Take Three
December 5, 1954
Warm Reception
After railroading an innocent man to a murder conviction, a hard-driving prosecutor is drawn into a lethal tangle of his own.
December 19, 1954
Ticket to Murder
December 26, 1954
The Dark Room
1955
January 2, 1955
Autumn Song
January 9, 1955
Jackson Street Affair
January 16, 1955
Flee from Evil
A man who kills his wife finds himself 'partners' with the next-door neighbor who saw it all -- and the victim adds a twist.
January 30, 1955
The Late Mister Phelps
Pulled from a wreck, a dazed survivor is talked into passing himself off as a shrewd woman's husband for a cut of the money.
A man who murdered a shipmate and staged it as suicide is horrified when a stranger boards posing as the dead man.
A ring of blackmailers plots murder and a tangle of double-crosses, each hunting an alibi for the killing to come.
Twenty years under his rich, domineering wife's thumb have left a failed artist with nothing -- and several people with reason to want her dead.
A drama critic and a columnist move through seven distinct steps from cordial acquaintance to murder.
A chauffeur consumed by his affair with the mistress of the house kills its master and arranges for the faithless woman to take the fall.
A captain washes ashore reporting his ship just wrecked -- but that ship went down twenty-five years ago.
A clever scheme smuggles forged Aaron Burr letters out of prison via released inmates.
A beautiful new housekeeper quietly sows discord in a wealthy British couple's marriage.
After doing away with his wife, a man hides the corpse in the building's elevator, and is unnerved when it will not stay where he left it.
On a Jamaican sugar estate, one partner plots to kill and pin it on his co-owner's son -- until he falls in love.
May 26, 1955
Maid of Honor
A young couple plan to marry against a shrewd, wealthy uncle's wishes, in a story that ends at a lodge on New Year's Eve.
Two dishonest art dealers are outfoxed by a brilliant Italian forger.
Racing through the night, Colby Fletcher spots a lone walker and sees the last piece of his plan to vanish by faking his own death.
A woman tangled up with a criminal sentenced to twenty years watches large sums change hands, and a murder follow.
Murder at an isolated Alaskan hunting lodge, and a desperate attempt to escape.
July 14, 1955
Murder at Roark Island
July 21, 1955
Trademark
July 28, 1955
The Blank Wall
A reformed convict watches his daughter's society wedding draw near, just as the household butler decides it is a fine moment to demand hush money.
An embezzling Cuban chemist needing $40,000 turns cortisone smuggler with a very dangerous lady.
A swindler who killed twice to keep his loot is undone by a television quiz show.
Top-billed for a year, dancer Clive is being pushed aside for a younger partner named Ricky, and he refuses to let his wife go, on stage or off.
A restless ship passenger follows a beautiful woman ashore in Panama, witnesses her knife a man, and learns just how lethal she can be.
Cheating on his rich wife, a man engineers a lethal 'mishap' for the friend who has learned too much. (The series' final Pacific-coast broadcast.)
September 15, 1955
Design for Murder
September 22, 1955
Element X
The Story
The Whistler was a mystery anthology framed by one of radio's most haunting devices: an unnamed narrator who walks by night and knows the secret terrors of ordinary people. Each episode opened on footsteps and a whistled theme, then the voice -- "I am the Whistler, and I know many things, for I walk by night..." -- before commenting on the action like a Greek chorus, taunting the guilty and innocent alike from outside the story. The house formula was iron: a criminal's act undone by an overlooked detail or his own stupidity, capped by an ironic, usually grim O. Henry sting in the final minute. Writer-producer J. Donald Wilson created the character and set its tone, and the show premiered May 16, 1942 on the CBS West Coast regional network, sponsored on the Pacific by Signal Oil. Bill Forman became the longest-tenured narrator, though the role passed through Gale Gordon, Joseph Kearns, Marvin Miller, and others; the stock company drew on William Conrad, Lurene Tuttle, and Jack Webb. In a singular 1948 episode, a sponsor dispute led CBS to broadcast two entirely separate productions at once -- different scripts, stars, and directors for western and eastern audiences. The theme was composed by Wilbur Hatch and whistled by Dorothy Roberts. Running thirteen years to 1955, The Whistler was a defining example of the ironic "crime-does-not-pay" anthology, and a rare radio property to cross into both film -- eight Columbia Pictures features -- and a 1954 TV series. Jack Benny parodied it as "I Am the Fiddler," and its narration even drifts across a car radio in the 1990 noir The Two Jakes.
Full story — coming soon while it's being curated.
Gallery
Art pending