New Series On RUSC - Crime Club

Crime Club was a thirty-minute show consisting of murder-mystery anthologies based on and featuring some of the stories from the Doubleday Crime Club books. It began in December 1946 and in those days Doubleday Crime Club was not a book club like today whereby you would be a member of a club and order a book but the books were available each week in bookstores everywhere and the adverts for each new crime story would be found on the dust covers. 

The radio show Crime Club was broadcast by Mutual and produced and directed by Roger Bower. The post war stories were by various different authors and adapted for radio by among others Stedman Coles and Wyllis Cooper (writer of Lights Out and Quiet Please). The narrator played by Barry Thomson is the supposed curator of the Crime Club library. He speaks to the listener as if they have just arrived (or phoned) and requested one of the Club's books.  

The telephone rings, “Hello I hope I haven’t kept you waiting. This is the librarian, Silent Witnesses; yes we have that Crime Club book for you, come right over.” The organ plays suspenseful music, the door opens and the librarian says, “Ah you’re here, good take the easy chair by the window. Comfortable? The book is on this shelf…”

He would take the book from the shelf and begin to tell the tale.  The story would end with the Librarian informing you that there was a new Crime Club book available this week and every week in bookstores everywhere.

And now the stories are available through RUSC for you to enjoy this weekend and each Friday thereafter.

Happy listening my friends,