Showing results by author "Steven Thomas" in All Categories

A meteor explodes in the summertime sky over Cape Cod, and a man is struck dead by a flying fragment. A freak accident, it is supposed, until Captain Underhill and Doctor Scofield, checking into the science and history of meteors, as well as the laws of probability, are led to form a different conclusion. In 1935, James M. Cain wrote the classic insurance fraud mystery, Double Indemnity. Here’s a story that could be titled Triple Indemnity.

A literary flashback combining the creations of Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol) and Erle Stanley Gardner, this courtroom melodrama poses the questions: What if Ebenezer Scrooge was murdered, found strangled in his bed with a bell cord knotted around his neck and a stake of holly driven through his heart? And what if the man charged with the crime was his own employee, Bob Cratchit?

Sparkling with magical realism, this book follows nine seemingly separate stories that dovetail in an unexpected and profound climax. It begins with a mysterious pow-wow to be held inside a colossal tipi, 3.5 miles tall and three miles wide, which suddenly appears on the outskirts of a small town. Advertising fliers blanket the area and all of Indian country, billing itself as "The Pow-Wow of all Pow-Wows." There is a stipulation to the pow-wow though: only full-blooded Native Americans are allowed to dance, drum, or attend the grand event.

Edward Wolcott is an innocent tourist abducted from his motel room, taken by boat, and strapped to a large sea buoy in the Woods Hole Passage. His strange night bobbing alone at sea turns into one of sheer terror, when he realizes the current is slowly dragging the buoy under.

An excellent Halloween story, this Pit and the Pendulum-style thriller places the listener on the buoy with Mr. Wolcott to experience the terror first hand.

A premonition of murder leading to violent death…voodoo, séances, automatic writing and psychic messages from the dead are all elements in a strange case that turns criminal. A worried Doctor Scofield calls in his friend, Captain Waverly Underhill, to unravel the mystery.

Tanya Macklin is the host of Talk Line, the weekly, advice-on-the-air radio program. Tonight, however, the problems of her listeners are about to take a back seat to one of her own ... a problem so large, it will transform her normally sane world into a nightmarish world of terror.

A real-time suspense thriller in the tradition of Sorry, Wrong Number.

For years an anonymous Cape Cod mural painter has been adorning the underpass to the Barnstable Village railroad bridge with images of scantily clad nudes in Classical poses. An activity which, although many in the Village enjoy them and approve, is also illegal and a source of irritation—particularly to nearby neighbor, Otis Narwhal, who feels the paintings go too far. With night-vision binoculars he sits on his porch at night, hoping to spy the Phantom Artist at work and report her to the local police.

Lottery winners Henry and Pamela McKnown have their luck stolen from them when their four-year-old daughter, Heidi, is kidnapped. Years pass without a word and the McKnowns, coping with their grief, are slowly rebuilding their lives. Then the cycle of terror begins again, as a carnival psychic shows up on Cape Cod, claiming to have made contact with the spirit of the dead child. Though Heidi’s voice comes through in a séance, Underhill is convinced it’s a fake.

When little Anna Gale Storm is abducted by a stranger in a white van, the police — and the media — spring into action. Bulletins are issued. The police swarm. News and police helicopters hover near the twin bridges. Anna Gale’s mother, Betsy Storm, is hysterical but must be questioned. The police are desperate, frustrated by the fact that the only eyewitness is a frightened, easily confused, five year old named Jody Higgins.

A comatose witness in the hospital is stalked by a fiendish killer. A compassionate psychiatrist must use the techniques of hypnosis to reach her in time before the killer does. A psychological thriller uniquely suited for radio. Told from the internal perspective of the comatose patient, it guides us through the twilight realm of the subconscious mind, where the real and the surreal coexist.

It begins as static ... then, you hear a voice, desperate, frightened, coming from a shack in the Cape Cod dunes, broadcasting his story to anyone who might be listening. He tells an unbelievable tale of missing persons and an unseen enemy that may already have conquered us.

Is he insane? Is he deluded? And most terrifying of all, is he telling the truth?

A mystery lampoon recorded live at the Woods Hole Community Hall, July 15, 1989. Hugo LeGrand, “The Great Hugo,” is determined to defy public opinion and be the first to help himself to the loot from the sunken Titanic. Together with his hapless pilot, Mr. Smalley, they discover a surprise much greater than teacups and saucers.

An epic river story and suspense thriller. If Mark Twain and Aaron Copland had gotten together to create an American river story for radio, it would probably sound something like this. Richard Thomas gives a memorable performance as river pilot Jeb Hardy, hired to deliver 15 barges and 40 million pounds of coal upriver on the Ohio to a power plant above Cincinnati. What begins as an idyllic rafting trip turns into a pilot’s worst nightmare.

Menacing mob enforcer, Ricky Rubusto, kidnaps pet and store mascot, Hercules, world’s largest captive lobster, holding it for ransom and threatening to devour it unless radio DJ, Molly Neptune, pays off her father’s gambling debt. Now Captain Underhill must save the lobster before it ‘sleeps with the fishes.’

A Captain Waverly Underhill mystery.

Captain Underhill and Doctor Scofield recount their very first case.

April, 1961. It is tourist season on Cape Cod … and open season on the President. Having sent its favorite son to the White House, Cape Cod has come under the spell of Camelot. Young police deputy Waverly Underhill meets Doctor Scofield for the very first time, and together they seek to stop an assassination plot that anyone would call crazy.

Lady Kemp is worried. Her granddaughter, Carmeline, is about to marry Victor Fabloose, a French playboy who may be a gold-digger ... or a poisoner.

Captain Waverly Underhill is offered $25,000 to make sure the marriage never takes place. To succeed, he devises a clever scheme involving real buried treasure—a solid-gold statue of a pirate as big as a chocolate Easter bunny.

Dr. Alexander Scofield encounters his friend, retired police captain Waverly Underhill, at a Provincetown art opening. Then they both encounter a murder. The celebrity judge is stabbed in the back upstairs. Downstairs, there are seventy or eighty guests, one of whom must have done it.

Captain Underhill takes charge and quickly devises a simple but ingenious test that will force the killer to reveal himself.

An old man leaps to his death from the Sagamore Bridge spanning the Cape Cod Canal. A clear case of suicide? Perhaps not, once Captain Underhill reads about it in the newspaper. Now, using the same bridge for his own cat and mouse purposes, Captain Underhill takes the killer for a ride…

Listeners are transported back to St. James Hall, Piccadilly, first to eavesdrop backstage on a heated discussion between George Dolby, Dickens’ road manager, and his physician, Dr. Beard, about whether the Chief should be allowed to go on stage to perform yet again another strenuous reading of his murder scene, which although popular, is now poising a grave risk to the Chief’s own health. For Dickens, these performances have become something of an obsession.

With the worldwide shift to remote work, more and more people have started taking control of their own lives, careers, and financial freedom by pursuing a previously unimaginable work style: abusing the system, automating their jobs, and for some, holding multiple white-collar jobs at the same time. People are doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling their income thanks to "overemployment"—the term being used to describe the lifestyle of multiple full-time job juggling. Because when you understand how corporate America works, and how it does not work, you can use it to your advantage.