Classic Mysteries

A 1971 outing for Miss Marple when a visitor to nearby Gossington Hall is poisoned - but could the poison have been intended for someone else...

Direct download: MirrorCrackd.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:26pm EDT

The five families of Crescent Place find their world turned upside down when an elderly woman is found murdered in her bed. A classic in the "Had I But Known" tradition.

Direct download: Album.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:12pm EDT

The young woman had so many secrets and loved to flaunt her knowledge. It proved to be a dangerous and deadly game.

Direct download: CoverHerFace.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:01pm EDT

Passengers escaping a snowbound train at Christmas seek shelter in an unoccupied house...and find murder...

Direct download: MysteryInWhite.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:28pm EDT

A chance meeting with a Turkish intelligence official sends Charles Latimer into a world of political assassination, espionage, drugs and an international conspiracy.

Direct download: CoffinForDimitrios.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:58am EDT

The thief left a bloody thumbprint behind. It was up to Dr. Thorndyke to prove that the clue pointed in the wrong direction.

Direct download: RedThumbMark.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:08pm EDT

Only Albert Campion stands between a gang of murderous thieves and their target - a priceless relic whose loss would be beyond catastrophe.

Direct download: LookToTheLady.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:55pm EDT

What starts as a routine traffic accident turns into a murder case for lawyer Perry Mason and his hapless client.

Direct download: CaseOfTheCrookedCandle.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:28pm EDT

A department store is no place for a murder - too many suspects, far too many customers, and managers who care more about sales figures than dead bodies.

Direct download: DeathWearsAWhiteGardenia.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:21pm EDT

Starlets, gangsters and secrets in the Hollywood of the late 1940s, as Philip Marlowe follows a trail that seems to have an awful lot of dead bodies littering the side of the road.

Direct download: LittleSister.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00pm EDT

A classic old-fashioned thriller by Edgar Wallace, where murder isn't necessarily the worst horror to be revealed in the mysterious tomb...

Direct download: DoorWithSevenLocks.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:02pm EDT

The first of the Judge Dee mysteries written by Van Gulik, the judge must solve three interrelated crimes: the murder in the sealed room, the hidden testament, and the girl with the severed head.

Direct download: ChineseMazeMurders.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:34pm EDT

Ellery Queen follows the trail of a murderer whose victims are beheaded and crucified. He'll have to figure out why before he can discover who...

Direct download: EgyptianCrossMystery.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:24pm EDT

Chief Inspector Hemingway had too much help from the amateur detectives trying to solve the murder. But then, as one character observed, "Between you and me and the gate-post, there’s a bit too much amateur detection going on in Thornden!"

Direct download: DetectionUnlimited.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:58pm EDT

Dr. Gideon Fell plays armchair detective to unravel the mystery of a murder aboard ship, an impossible disappearance, a stolen artifact, some highly compromising film, a dangerous criminal, all adding up to a zany comedy about a deadly serious crime.

Direct download: BlindBarber.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:15pm EDT

Amateur detective Philo Vance finds that a Scottish terrier and some Chinese pottery hold the key to a baffling murder in a locked and bolted room.

Direct download: KennelMurderCase.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:56pm EDT

Nero Wolfe rarely leaves home - so when he travels to a luxury spa in West Virginia for a gourmet banquet, he is less than pleased to find himself in the middle of a murder case.

Direct download: TooManyCooks.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:35am EDT

Think of it as a "screwball mystery": Shady lawyer John J. Malone, publicity agent Jake Justus and socialite Helene Brand investigate the stabbing murder of a tyrannical old woman in order to clear the name of the victim's niece.

Direct download: 8FacesAt3.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:51pm EDT

Sir Clinton Driffield investigates a peculiar robbery, a more peculiar murder, and the case of a vanishing thief.

Direct download: TragedyAtRavensthorpe.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:34pm EDT

Finding the killer wasn't the hard part for Inspector Meredith - it was finding evidence that had him stumped.

Direct download: LakeDistrictMurder.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:28pm EDT

When an elderly woman witnesses a murder through the window of a passing train, nobody believes her - except Miss Jane Marple...

Direct download: 450FromPaddington.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:57pm EDT

The classic Greek philosopher Aristotle must solve the murder of a wealthy Athenian citizen - and, by doing so, clear the honor and the name of one of his former pupils.

Direct download: AristotleDetective.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:03pm EDT

Monsieur Gallet was shot to death. Or perhaps he was stabbed. He was a salesman. Or possibly not. He died in Sancerre. But he should have been in Rouen. So much of what was known about the victim appeared to be wrong. It was quite a puzzle for Inspector Maigret. 

Direct download: LateMonsieurGallet.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:39pm EDT

In Victorian times, a curiosity about spiritualism drove many upper-middle class Englishmen and women to experiment with seances and the occult. Sometimes, those seances could cover up other crimes...and when one ends in murder, Sergeant Cribb must determine both who committed the murder - and why.

Direct download: ACaseOfSpirits.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:38pm EDT

Fifteen more stories by Edward D. Hoch featuring New England country doctor, Dr. Sam Hawthorne, as he solves locked room mysteries and seemingly impossible crimes.

Direct download: NothingIsImpossible.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:40pm EDT

A forgotten classic of the American Golden Age, Anne Austin's "One Drop of Blood" is the story of a murder in an asylum for mentally ill patients. Was the killer one of the inmates? Or was it all part of an ingenious plot by a very sane murderer?

Direct download: OneDropOfBlood.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:42pm EDT

A classic Golden Age "country house" mystery, originally published in 1937, the family patriarch takes a night-time stroll near a cliff...and falls to his death. Then his heir is shot to death...and HIS heir finds himself under deadly attack...

Direct download: TheyFoundHimDead.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:47pm EDT

A vintage Golden Age mystery from 1935, set in Oxford at all-female Persephone College: a group of undergraduates tackle the murder of a most unpopular Bursar.

Direct download: DeathOnTheCherwell.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:43pm EDT

Sir Henry Merrivale takes on a murderous plot at a British film studio that may involve espionage.

Direct download: AndSoToMurder.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:28pm EDT

Lord Peter Wimsey is the archetypal Golden Age aristocratic amateur sleuth. In "Whose Body?" he must discover the identity of the man's body found in a bathtub, wearing only a pair of golden pince-nez glasses.

Direct download: WhoseBody.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:57pm EDT

A new Albert Campion mystery, based on the character created by Margery Allingham and continued by her widower, Pip Youngman Carter. When Carter died, he left the first four chapters of a new Campion novel, and author Mike Ripley has now completed that novel - and it's well worth reading.

Direct download: MrCampionsFarewell.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:21pm EDT

Biblio expert Henry Gamadge was pretty sure that the lettering which appeared suddenly on an old engraving wasn't supernatural in origin. But he couldn't foresee that it would lead so suddenly to murder.

Direct download: WrongWayDown.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:53pm EDT

A terrifying tale of a sort of murder game gone very wrong - one of the most terrifying of Dr. Fell's career.

Direct download: DeathWatch.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:11pm EDT

Meet Miriam Lea, one of the earliest female detectives in fiction. She appeared in this 1888 novel by Leonard Merrick, acting as a private investigator in Mr. Bazalgette's detective agency. Hired to find an absconding banker, she pursues her quarry all the way from England to South Africa - with several surprises along the way.

Direct download: MrBazalgettesAgent.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:32pm EDT

The people in the ancient village of Saxon Wall had a number of unsavory secrets, which they hid rather imperfectly from any who wandered into the village. It took Mrs. Bradley quite a while to dig out the truths about what was really going on in the village - and who was responsible for some pretty chilling murders.

Direct download: DevilAtSaxonWall.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:47pm EDT

Professor Quinn was obnoxious, to say the least. But who disliked him enough to poison his coffee? And how did the murderer put the poison in the Professor's cup without anyone seeing it happen? These are just a few of the questions New York City Police Lieutenant Sigrid Harald must answer in order to solve the mystery.

Direct download: OneCoffeeWith.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:27pm EDT

Who would kill to uncover the secret of a small statuette of a Chinese goddess, the goddess of the green shiver?

Direct download: GreenShiver.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:59pm EDT

Judge Dee expected a relaxing few days off when he arrived in Rivertown on his way home. What he found instead was a gruesome murder, the theft of a pearl necklace, and a court intrigue that threatened the foundation of the Chinese empire.

Direct download: NecklaceAndCalabash2.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:05pm EDT

Maigret's first recorded case finds him trying to track a criminal known as "Pietr the Latvian" - who may be a murderer or who may be a murder victim.

Direct download: PietrTheLatvian.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:40pm EDT

The British Library Crime Classics series brings back a mystery by John Bude, a once-popular, now almost completely forgotten author, whose entertaining books deserve a new generation of readers.

Direct download: CornishCoastMurder.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:44am EDT

Asey Mayo, the "Codfish Sherlock," tackles a murder case at a charity auction on Cape Cod, where the bidders hoped to find hidden treasure - and came up with a corpse instead.

Direct download: GoingGoingGone.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:07pm EDT

All of Dorothy L. Sayers' short stories are collected here - stories with the aristocratic Lord Peter Wimsey, stories with traveling salesman Montague Egg, and a variety of stories of mystery and suspense from one of the best writers of England's Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

Direct download: DorothyLSayersCompleteStories.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:04pm EDT

The murder of Mrs. Rockcliff was a terrible thing. But perhaps even more terrible was the disappearance of the victim's newborn baby - the fifth such disappearance in Mitford. Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte - Bony, to his friends - knew that the baby-snatchings had to take precedence over solving the murder.

Direct download: MurderMustWait.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:41am EDT

An "old battle-ax" of a narrator, Adelaide Adams, tells this story about murder in a hotel in an American southern city. It's a masterpiece of the "Had I But Known" school, told with charm, wit and humor.

Direct download: MurderALaRichelieu.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:06pm EDT

What would you do if you had written an unpublished mystery - and somebody used the method of murder in real life that you had created in your mystery? Radio writer Bill Tracy had to figure out who was stealing his ideas - and translating them into real murders.

Direct download: MurderCanBeFun.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:19pm EDT

The art dealer's will had disappeared. Ellery Queen figured it had to be in the dead man's coffin. But when they opened the coffin, they found a lot more than they had bargained for. A classic Ellery Queen puzzle to challenge the reader.

Direct download: GreekCoffinMystery.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:04am EDT

A horseback ride in Central Park proves deadly for a popular model - and Hildegarde Withers and Inspector Piper will find that the noble sport of horse racing plays a critical role in the search for a solution.

Direct download: PuzzleOfTheRedStallion.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:42pm EDT

Who was the girl on the stairs - and who was the dead woman in the cellar? It was up to Miss Silver to find the truth.

Direct download: GirlInTheCellar.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:00pm EDT

Nero Wolfe investigates the peculiar murder of a chess wizard.

Direct download: Gambit.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:04am EDT

Mr. and Mrs. North take on the killer of a United States senator.

Direct download: DishonestMurderer.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:52am EDT

Direct download: CasebookOfJonasPJonas.mp3
Category: -- posted at: 5:30am EDT

Direct download: DiabolicCandelabra.mp3
Category: -- posted at: 5:30am EDT

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