Get this and get it straight. Crime is a suckers road and those who travel it wind up in the gut of the prison of the grave.

The story you are about to hear is true, only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

The Adventures of Sam Spade Detective.

The Adventures of the Saints starring Vincent Prize

Bob Bailey in the exciting adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account

America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator.

Yours truly, Johnny Deller. the Hello and welcome to down these mean streets.

This week we're answering the mail at Box 13 with Alan Ladd as a mystery writer turned

amateur detective Dan Holliday. In a creative search for story ideas, Holiday ran a newspaper ad, one that read

Adventure Wanted will go any place, do anything, write Box 13.

The pleas for help poured into his mailbox, and each week Holiday put himself in harm's way,

hoping that whatever he found would make for a good page turner someday.

It wasn't a novel idea, no pun intended.

A few years earlier on radio, George Valentine did the same thing on Let George do it.

But the big difference and one of the things that makes Box 13 unique is that Dan Holliday wasn't a professional detective or investigator.

He didn't carry a gun and he didn't have a team of sidekicks waiting to bail him out if things

got too hairy.

He wasn't in it for the money, so he didn't have a paying client to answer to.

In perhaps the most unbelievable element of the show Holiday consistently refuses payment for his services.

All he has are his wits and the tricks of the trade he learned in his earlier life as a newspaper reporter.

And all of that turned Dan Holliday into one of radio's most interesting sloths and Box 13

into a terrific show.

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