Dashiell Hammett created the character Sam Spade for his crime story The Maltese Falcon. Spade was a hard-boiled detective with cold detachment, a keen eye for detail, and an unflinching determination to exact his own justice. For most people, Spade is most closely associated with actor Humphrey Bogart, who played him in the third and most famous film version of The Maltese Falcon. In 1946 one of radio's top producers, William Spier, brought Sam Spade to the airwaves in a radio show starring newcomer Howard Duff.

Philo Vance is a fictional character featured in numerous crime novels written by S. S. Van Dine, published in the 1920s and 1930s, who was later revived in film and on radio and television. During that time Vance was immensely popular. He was portrayed as a stylish, even foppish dandy, a New York bon vivant with a highly intellectual bent - America's Sherlock Holmes. He worked closely with his secretary and right-hand woman, Ellen Deering, and his pal, John Markham, New York County district attorney.

The golden age of radio had incredible detective shows that kept Americans glued to their sets. Families gathered around their living room radios to hear their favorite Hollywood stars voicing fiction's most famous gumshoes. This collection includes Dick Powell as suave detective Richard Diamond, Vincent Price as the Saint, Jack Webb as Sergeant Joe Friday on Dragnet, Richard Kollmar as "enemy to those who make him an enemy, friend to those who have no friend" on Boston Blackie, and much more!

The world-weary private investigator Harry Nile is one step ahead of the mob, but one step behind the bill collectors. That's why he takes pretty much any case he can catch—from robbery to kidnapping to murder. Phil Harper stars as Harry in twenty-one mood-filled mysteries, aided and assisted by Pat French as Murphy, his secretary extraordinaire. This is classic radio noir for a new generation, created and produced by Jim French.

No bigger fad swept across postwar radio than that of the hard-boiled private detective - and nobody had more fun with their wink-and-nudge take on the genre than the producers, writers, and cast of The Adventures of Sam Spade. Dashiell Hammett's legendary private eye had a sardonic sense of humor, which wavy-haired, rugged-voiced Howard Duff played to perfection.

Beginning with A Study in Scarlet and concluding with The Hound of the Baskervilles, this epic project took over 8 years to complete - and this landmark collection contains the extraordinary result. Here is the world's first ever fully dramatised Sherlock Holmes canon: 56 short stories and 4 novels, all made by the same team of directors, producers, dramatists and leading actors, and packed with the high production qualities of a film or TV drama that set it apart.

Cherub-faced, blue-eyed World War II hero Les Damon played detective Michael Waring - better known as The Falcon. Damon played the role with style, pulling off the character's transition from private eye to army intelligence operative with panache. This collection of 16 digitally remastered episodes begins with Waring's wars against domestic enemies, including gambling bosses, arsonists, con artists, drug dealers, and killers.

From out of the rain-swept postwar night comes Harry Nile - a man who's seen it all, because he just can't look away. Here are 19 state-of-the-art radio noir dramas, produced by West Coast legend Jim French, and starring Larry Albert as the hard-boiled, straight-shooting Harry! This collection includes four more installments of the "War Comes To Harry Nile" storyline, a Christmas episode, two two-part adventures, and more. You'll hear Pat French, Jay Green, John Patrick Lowrie...and a whole bunch of killer cases.

Jane Marple is an elderly lady from St Mary Mead who possesses an uncanny knack for solving even the most perplexing puzzles. Now, for the first time in 45 years, Agatha Christie’s beloved character returns to the page for a globe-trotting tour of crime and detection. Join Marple as she travels through her sleepy English village and around the world. In St Mary Mead, a Christmas dinner is interrupted by unexpected guests; the Broadway stage in New York City is set for a dangerous improvisation.

The village of Badger's Drift is the essence of tranquillity. But when resident and well-loved spinster Miss Simpson takes a stroll in the nearby woods, she stumbles across something she was never meant to see, and there's only one way to keep her quiet. Miss Simpson's death is not suspicious, say the villagers. But Miss Lucy Bellringer refuses to rest: her friend has been murdered. She is sure of it.