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For twenty years Suspense was radio's outstanding theater of thrills, dropping ordinary people into extraordinary danger and letting the tension do the rest. In "Headshrinker," a psychiatrist crosses the line with the patient he is supposed to be healing, and the affair poisons the very thing that was meant to save her. When she finally understands what has been done to her, she walks back into his office with a gun and a demand that it end — all of it. Writer-director William N. Robson called this one a deliberate departure from the usual Suspense formula: naked passion instead of orchestral embellishment, and a psychological knot earlier radio producers would not have dared to touch. Nina Foch and Helmut Dantine star, and the ending refuses to tell you whether anything was truly broken — or whether it is all about to begin again.

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Quiet Please was radio's quietest horror show — Wyllis Cooper writing, Ernest Chappell talking straight to you, one organ in the dark, and almost no sound effects at all. In "Wear the Dead Man's Coat," a freezing, broke man kills a stranger in the street for the overcoat on his back. It's the warmest coat he's ever owned, he feels nothing about how he got it, and he's certain he'll never be caught. Then an old rhyme he heard as a boy comes back to him: wear the dead man's coat, and none will take note. People stop looking at him. Then they stop seeing him at all. First broadcast February 23, 1948, and still one of the finest half hours of horror radio ever made.

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Boston Blackie is the reformed jewel thief who solves the cases the police can't — "enemy to those who make him an enemy, friend to those who have no friend" — with Inspector Faraday always half a step behind and usually pointing at Blackie. In this June 25, 1947 episode, ex-con Joe Nelson is going straight behind the counter of his pet shop when a racket boss offers to put a gambling setup in his back room. Nelson says no, then turns up murdered in Blackie's own apartment before he can finish his story. The killer strong-arms Nelson's cousin Frank into luring Blackie down to the shop, where Blackie is knocked cold, tied in a sack, and dropped in the river. Getting out of the sack is the easy part. Richard Kollmar stars as Blackie, with Jan Miner as Mary Wesley and Maurice Tarplin as Faraday.

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Dan Holiday, the mystery novelist who goes looking for trouble through a newspaper classified ad — "Adventure wanted, will go anywhere, do anything, write Box 13" — opens a letter from a painter who thinks he needs an exorcist. Michael Davis works alone in a studio at 183 Lincoln Mews, and he swears that something finishes his canvases while he sleeps: brushstrokes and details he never put there, appearing overnight on locked-up work. Holiday takes the case expecting a hoax and finds a very human motive hiding behind the haunting. Alan Ladd stars in one of the most-requested entries in the 1948 syndicated run.

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John Stanley's Sherlock Holmes carried Baker Street through radio's late golden age, each half-hour framed as a case Dr. Watson recalls over a glass of sherry. "The Adventure of the Elusive Agent" is a rare three-part serial from the spring of 1949, set not in the gaslit 1890s but in 1913, with Europe drifting toward war. Mycroft Holmes has called his brother down from his bees in Sussex: the plans for an experimental armored fighting vehicle are gone, the naval officer entrusted with them was murdered on his honeymoon, and the agent who took them left almost nothing behind. This is part two of three — the hunt narrows, the trail turns on a question of identity, and the race is on to reach the plans before they leave England.

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Bob Bailey stars as Johnny Dollar, the freelance insurance investigator with the action-packed expense account. A jittery underwriter sent him to Cape Town to guard the Star of Capetown, a $150,000 diamond owned by a playboy who treats a priceless stone like pocket change — and by the end of the last chapter Johnny was flat on his back and the diamond was gone. In this third chapter of the five-part case, he takes a helicopter out to a cruise liner steaming away from the African coast with the stolen stone somewhere aboard. Now he is locked in at sea with his suspects, working the passenger list and the staterooms while the man who slugged him walks the same corridors. Originally broadcast on CBS, July 18, 1956, with Virginia Gregg, Harry Bartell, Jeanne Tatum, Marvin Miller and Chester Stratton.

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Alan Ladd stars as Dan Holiday, the newspaperman who walked away from the city desk to write mystery novels and went looking for plots by running a standing ad in the Star-Times: "Adventure wanted, will go anywhere, do anything — Box 13." Tonight the box holds an unsigned note asking him to come to a park bench after dark. What waits for him there isn't a client at all but a small girl sitting alone in the night, who says one of her two mothers told her to stay put until he came. Syndicated in 1948 by Ladd's own Mayfair Productions, with Sylvia Picker as his scatterbrained secretary Suzy, Edmund MacDonald as Lieutenant Kling, and music by Rudy Schrager.

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Before Buster Crabbe ever pulled on the boots, Flash Gordon flew through American living rooms on the Mutual Broadcasting System — a 26-week serial adapted almost panel for panel from Alex Raymond's celebrated Sunday comic page, with Gale Gordon the very first actor to play the hero. In this chapter, broadcast May 25, 1935, Flash collects his prize from the tournament staged by Ming the Merciless and King Vultan of the Hawk Men: the subterranean cave kingdom of Mongo. With Dale Arden beside him he descends into a realm of tunnels, torchlit caverns and uneasy subjects to see just what sort of king he has become — and the Cave World holds more than shadows.

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Bob Bailey stars as Johnny Dollar, the freelance insurance investigator with the action-packed expense account. A nervous underwriter sends him to Cape Town to babysit a fabulous diamond belonging to an eccentric playboy who treats a priceless stone like loose change. In this second chapter of the five-part case, the assignment falls apart: Johnny is knocked cold, the Star of Capetown vanishes, and the trail runs out over open water. He takes a helicopter out to a cruise ship steaming away from the continent with the stolen stone aboard. Originally broadcast on CBS, July 17, 1956, with Virginia Gregg, Harry Bartell, Marvin Miller and Jeanne Tatum.

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James Stewart stars as Britt Ponset, the drifting Texas cowboy at the heart of NBC's folksy 1953 Western The Six Shooter. Word tears into the town of Elk Point that Stacy Gault — bank robber, outlaw, killer — is riding their way, and panic does the rest. Britt sees the rumor for what it is and finds himself the only cool head in town, trying to talk Elk Point down before a jumpy posse guns down a man who may well be innocent. The real danger here isn't the outlaw on the road; it's the fear boiling up inside the townspeople. Written by Frank Burt, with Eleanor Audley, Barney Phillips, Forrest Lewis and Parley Baer.

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