Crime Fiction on the Radio

Radio’s a great medium for crime fiction.  All those settings crime fiction readers love so much – exotic, historical, gritty, pastoral – come to life in an instant as the writer’s words meld with the listener’s imagination. There’s no shock when the hero doesn’t look as you’ve imagined, there are no flaky sets or miscast characters. It’s all there, just right. So, where do you find it? Radio crime fiction has a great champion in Mark Lawson who presents Front Row on Radio4 – there’s often a crime fiction slot on his show and this autumn he is presenting A History of Modern Europe Through Literary Detectives  (see Romancrimeblogger’s article on this plus relevant links). Aside from the marvellous Mark, Radio4 will often feature a full length crime drama in one of its weekend slots. Radio4extra, the digital partner of Radio4, devotes an entire hour every morning to serialised crime fiction, sometimes a straight reading of a novel, sometimes a dramatization. There’s invariably a longer one at weekends; perhaps a weekly episode of a series or maybe a stand-alone. There’s something for everyone. The last couple of weeks have seen a re-run of Dick Barton, Special Agent, recorded in 1947, a (brilliant) reading by Bernard Hepton of an Inspector Barlach novella, a Sherlock Holmes story, Simon Brett’s Charles Paris (starring Bill Nighy), a set of Ian Rankin short stories, Ruth Rendell’s the Keys to the Street, Baldi (the Irish priest detective played by David Threlfall)…old, new, classic adaptations, dramas written specifically for the radio. And it all stays on i-player for at least a week so any missed episodes can be caught….so much crime, so little time ….