The Island of Coffins and Other Mysteries from the Casebook of Cabin B-13

John Dickson Carr, the grandmaster of locked room mysteries and impossible disappearances, was also the master of the creepy radio play. For the first time, all the scripts for the classic 1948 radio series, Cabin B-13, are printed in this volume, and they are classic Carr. The Island of Coffins is a superb addition to the classic works of John Dickson Carr.

From The Washington Post:

"If you enjoy old-time radio, you can easily imagine the tightly plotted dramas of John Dickson Carr’s “The Island of Coffins and Other Mysteries From the Casebook of Cabin B-13” (Crippen and Landru) as segments of WAMU’s “The Big Broadcast” with Murray Horwitz. Yet this collection of 23 radio scripts, edited with scholarly annotation by Tony Medawar and Douglas Greene, is nearly as much fun just to read.

"As the luxury liner Maurevania cruises around the world, its medical officer, Dr. Fabian, reminisces about strange mysteries associated with various ports of call. “A Razor in Fleet Street” ingeniously plays off the legend of Sweeney Todd, the demon barber. “The Bride Vanishes” — about the reenactment of an inexplicable suicide — takes place on Capri, with a surprise climax in the Blue Grotto. The title story, “The Island of Coffins” transports the reader/listener to a small isle cut off from civilization since the 1920s. Other scripts bear such evocative titles as “The Street of the Seven Daggers” and “The Curse of the Bronze Lamp.” All of them rely on the sneaky use of ambiguity and misdirection.