Welcome to Noirvember, the time of the year we put away our skeletons and hang them up in closets–for detectives to discover. An annual celebration of crime, mystery, and detective stories.
So as we settle in, I’d love to recommend some great mystery stories and crime dramas from Big Finish Productions! All of these are new-listener friendly.
I’ll be back throughout the month to review some of Big Finish’s mystery and crime stories in greater depth.
Vienna
Berkeley Silver, one of the richest men in the Earth empire, lies dead in the Penthouse Suite of the Galileo space-hotel. Law Enforcement Officers Detective Captain McGinnis and Detective Sergeant Mead are called in to investigate – but it seems to have been the perfect crime. Even when subjected to a memory scan, everybody in the space-hotel has an alibi for the murder.
Which means it can only have been the work of one woman. The most accomplished – and the most glamorous – bounty hunter in the galaxy. Her name is Vienna Salvatori. And she has a little rule; nobody gets to hear her name and live…
You can purchase Vienna: The Memory Box here.
Invaders from Mars
Hallowe’en 1938.
A year after a mysterious meteorite lit up the skies of New York state, Martian invaders laid waste to the nation. At least, according to soon-to-be infamous Orson Welles they did. But what if some of the panicked listeners to the legendary War of the Worlds broadcast weren’t just imagining things?
Attempting to deliver Charley to her rendezvous in Singapore 1930, the Doctor overshoots a little, arriving in Manhattan just in time to find a dead private detective. Indulging his gumshoe fantasies, the Doctor is soon embroiled in the hunt for a missing Russian scientist whilst Charley finds herself at the mercy of a very dubious Fifth Columnist.
With some genuinely out of this world ‘merchandise’ at stake, the TARDIS crew are forced into an alliance with a sultry dame called Glory Bee, Orson Welles himself and a mobster with half a nose known as ‘The Phantom’.
And slowly but surely, something is drawing plans against them. Just not very good ones…
You can purchase Invaders from Mars here.
Jago and Litefoot
Professor George Litefoot: the eminent pathologist who advises the police in some of their grisliest cases. Henry Gordon Jago: the master of ceremonies at the Alhambra Theatre. These are two very different men from contrasting strata in society who became firm friends and collaborators after their adventure with the Doctor and Leela battling the evil Weng-Chiang.
Some years later, Jago and Litefoot have defeated dangerous denizens of the daemonic darkness together. They have stood side by side against threats to the British Empire. But when a body is found on the banks of the River Thames and Litefoot’s post mortum reveals that it is actually a highly detailed wooden mannequin, their most dangerous adventure begins.
Dr Tulp has masterminded a deadly scheme, Jack Yeovil and his murderous gang plan to live forever, and only Jago and Litefoot can stop them…
You can purchase The Mahogany Murderers here.
Dark Shadows (Tony and Cassandra)
She’s a witch. He’s a private detective. And when they get together, it’s magic…
A new digital collection of five Dark Shadows releases featuring Tony Peterson and Cassandra Collins.
You can purchase The Tony and Cassandra Collection here.
She’s a witch. He’s a private detective. And when they get together, it’s magic…
The Mystery at Crucifix Heights by Philip Meeks
“We need someone who doesn’t, shall we say, ‘scare’ easily.”
When private investigator Tony Peterson goes undercover to Chicago with his no-nonsense secretary Rita Channing, he has no idea the formidable witch Cassandra Collins is about to make a suitably dramatic entrance back into his life.
At a rambling mansion called Crucifix Heights and cut off by a ferocious snowstorm Tony and Cassandra have been hired by separate clients to attend an auction of deadly arcane objects and artefacts.
The pair at first struggle to reconcile their differences but then people around them start dying horribly, one by one. They have to try to work together, because the killer at large is ingenious and seemingly unstoppable. Everyone stranded at Crucifix Heights is in peril. Including themselves.
The Mystery of La Danse Macabre by Zara Symes
“I don’t take kindly to almost being killed. One attempt, maybe two; well, fair’s fair. But I won’t stand for three.”
Tony and Cassandra knew when they took their first case together that there would be a few bumps in the road but when the supernatural detective duo arrive at Busby Hall in downtown Boston, a dilapidated music hall that’s rumoured to be haunted, they’ll find that there’s more danger afoot than just things that go bump in the night.
Battling against curses, bargains with the dark side, and more than one attempt on their lives, will Tony and Cassandra be able to overcome their differences and work as a team? Or will this be their last waltz?
The Mystery of Flight 493 by Alan Flanagan
“Nobody move! There’s a man standing in the doorway of the cockpit…”
When Tony and Cassandra board a flight bound for home they think that their latest case is behind them, until a terrifying creature begins to murder their fellow passengers. Something is hunting the people on Flight 493, and Tony and Cassandra must deduce what connects it with a story about a little boy who’s terrified of what might be under his bed… before it’s all far too late…
The Mystery of Karmina Sonata by Aaron Lamont
“So just for clarity’s sake. You think you’ve accidentally unleashed a demon from the Spirit World during a bogus seance which is… potentially… killing your wealthy clients. And you want us to stop it before it gets to you. Have I missed anything…?”
When Karmina Sonata arrives in their office, Tony and Cassandra think it’s just another case. A séance gone wrong, a few violent deaths… Par for the course, if you specialize in the unusual. But what if this is not just another case? What if something else is going on? And what if, just if, their sins are about to find them out? Because for Tony and Cassandra, things will never be the same again…
You can purchase the Tony and Cassandra Mysteries Series 1 here.
Iris Wildthyme
Midwinter Murders
Written by George Mann
People are dropping like flies in the Warwickshire village of Midwinter Leys and the number one suspect is Iris Wildthyme. Can Inspector Nettles and Sergeant Spartan find the real culprit before more loveable locals are murdered in increasingly bizarre ways? And will Panda ever get his pork pie?
You can purchase Midwinter Murders here.
Sherlock Holmes
It is the long, oppressive summer of 1912. Four months ago the RMS Titanic was lost to the Atlantic. In Europe the drumbeats of war grow louder.
These things have yet to touch Mr Sherlock Holmes who, estranged from Dr Watson, lives in reclusive retirement on the South Downs. The world’s foremost criminal investigator has turned his back on the past, hiding from the world and thinking himself immune to its excesses. Yet he is about to be faced by an old friend, to encounter the most hated man in England and to grapple with the painful implications of the Titanic disaster. More troubling still, he will be forced to try to solve a new and unexpected mystery – one of the most diabolical and fiendish murders with which he has ever been confronted…
You can purchase The Adventure of the Perfidious Mariner here.
No Man’s Land
You can purchase No Man’s Land here.
Judge Dredd
A corpse with no face lies on the line between Immigration and Mega-City One. A feud breaks out between wannabe drug dealers. A shape-shifting killer is on the loose in Alientown. And Dredd’s partner is an irritating, green-skinned company flack with an inflated sense of his own importance.
But when it comes to solving the crime and enforcing the Law, Judge Dredd is on his own.
Carnacki the Ghost-Finder
Dan Starkey takes on the mantle of William Hope Hodgson’s supernatural detective, Thomas Carnacki, in this collection of enhanced audiobook readings:
The Gateway of the Monster
The House Among the Laurels
The Whistling Room
The Horse of the Invisible
The Searcher of the End House
The Thing Invisible
You can download the first story, “The Monster on Hold,” for Free.
James Bojaciuk
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