Biddle Riddle Caper: The Adventures of Sam Spade (January 5, 1951)

“Biddle Riddle Caper” is an episode of The Adventures of Sam Spade, the old-time radio show, first broadcast January 5, 1951. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

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What happens

Sam Spade is hired by a radio producer to find Jimmy Biddle, a doorman who was the prime suspect in an unsolved murder case from two years earlier. Biddle claims to have information about who killed Carol Stevens, a burlesque dancer found dead in her apartment, and demands $50,000 for the information. When Spade finds Biddle dead with a tape recorder in his apartment, a recorded confession implicates Biddle himself in the crime.

San Francisco, including the Drake Carlton Hotel, Pacific Ballroom, Norgaard's office on Market Street, a boarding house on Pacific Avenue, and a recording studio at an NBC sound stage.

Characters: Sam Spade, Tracy Abbott, Jimmy Biddle, Joseph P. Norgaard, Rosalie, Luke, Carol Stevens

Listen for: The clever revelation that Biddle's confession has been doctored by splicing tape recordings together. Listen for how Spade discovers the murder victim through an eight-day mantle clock that was set forward, and how a tape recorder becomes the key to unmasking the real killer.

Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.