Radio Recap: Murder by Experts

Recently I listened to all of what remains of the radio program Murder by Experts. Considering that it ran on Mutual for more than 2 years and over a hundred episodes, it's astonishing that only Fifteen episodes are circulating today.

It's a bit of an odd duck - not quite what it claims to be. Initially the show was hosted by mystery author John Dickson Carr, later by author Bret Halliday. Each week they claimed that another famous author (such as Cornell Woolrich) had chosen the story which they were dramatising.

That claim is... practically unbelieveable. Many of the surviving episodes of Murder by Experts are recycled scripts from Molle Mystery Theater. Indeed, comparing the two series radio logs, I see 31 episode titles on Murder by Experts which originated on Molle Mystery Theater. I just can't believe that none of these famous authors chose stories written by their peers but instead asked Murder by Experts to redo a Molle Mystery Theater script or present a new story by the creators of The Mysterious Traveler. It feels as though the titular "Experts" lent nothing more than their names; maybe Mutual paid them with a basket of cheeses.

As I alluded above, the series was produced by the same people as The Mysterious Traveler, so it feels very much the same - many familiar script beats and familiar actors. However, Murder by Experts lacked the supernatural and sci-fi tales which the Mysterious Traveler frequently indulged in.

I bring all of this up because in 1951, Murder by Experts won the Edgar Award for best radio program. I just can't believe a bunch of dusty Molle scripts by the Mysterious Traveler guys were the best mystery programs on radio, not when Suspense, the Whistler and Dragnet were on the air (in fact, the Whistler never won an Edgar, unlike Suspense and Dragnet). I wonder if that Edgar was merely a political award - handed out because the show plugged a famous mystery author every week and probably name-checked the majority of people who were voting on the ballot.

All this makes it sound like I dislike Murder by Experts; I don't. I think it's inferior to Suspense, but most shows were inferior to Suspense (compare the Murder by Epxerts production of "Return Trip" to the Suspense version - it's no contest, Suspense dramatized the same script much more ably). From those few remaining episodes there are some quite good programs; the first episode, "Summer Heat," was later adapted on the Alfred Hitchcock Hour. "Three's a Crowd" is also a great crime story. There's some good in there - but almost every other surviving episode is a new version of an earlier production which still exists.