The One of the first old time radio detective shows I ever heard was Box 13 and I was

hooked from the moment I pressed play on my cassette player. The show starred big screen actor Alan Ladd as Dan Holliday, a reporter

turned mystery writer. To come up with plots for his novels, Holliday took out a newspaper ad offering his services as an adventurer

for hire.

His ad proclaims he will go anywhere and do anything, and asks for offers to be sent to Box 13.

Each letter puts Dan Holiday on a new adventure where he may risk life and limb,

but he'll end up with a great story.

So why do I like this show so much?

For one thing, the hook is fantastic.

By making Dan Holliday an amateur detective,

Box 13 takes away a lot of the tricks of the trade from the stable of radio

gumshoes. Holiday doesn't carry a gun and he doesn't have a license to

justify his intervention and his investigations. His adventures can take him across the country and sometimes even around the world

and he's a man entirely on his own

no backup to call no partner by his side

he's got to rely completely on his wits, and he employs

some of the best actual detective work heard on radio, whether he's following a suspect,

conducting an interview, or digging through files in the newspaper, Morg,

you really get the sense that Dan Holliday is investigating these cases.

The stories that the writers cooked up for Holiday are wonderful too.

Nearly half of the episodes were written by Russell Hughes

a co-producer on the series with Alan Ladd and a veteran radio script writer. Years later, Hughes penned the script for The

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