Paper by Noon · Velvet Shadows

This radio drama uses AI-generated writing, voices, music, sound effects and artwork. All spoken performances in this edition use ElevenLabs V4.

At noon the Ministry froze Prague's Lion Fund, and by then its best shares had already left, on transfers that carry the chairman's signature. Professor Malina, the chairman whose face is on the fund's posters, writes to the detective Antonín Zima that he is accused of a theft he did not commit and has no one else to ask. Who got those shares out before the freeze?

🎧 Full episode of Velvet Shadows: a modern noir detective audio drama set in Prague, a radio mystery performed by a full cast.

Listen as a podcast, with full transcripts: https://mono-noir.transistor.fm/

Stories, transcripts and the schedule: https://matezz.com

🎭 Directed Edition — every role cast for this story and every line performed with full voice direction.

Prague, June 1997. The bookseller Pavel Hruška, who tells this story, has shut his shop early and is reading the evening paper to his friend, the detective Antonín Zima, among the unsold poets in the back office. Hruška's own coupon book is in the Lion Fund. Then Zima reads out the letter he received that afternoon, pencilled on the back of a ruled answer sheet. At the university in Žižkov the word Thief is chalked across Professor Malina's door, and the suspended professor, with letters from the families who trusted his name spilled across his desk, insists that he signed nothing. At the fund's offices on Na Příkopě, where seals are going across the doors, Kapitán Rys of the Criminal Police explains that nine transfer orders were dropped in the securities registry's night box at dawn, delivered by nobody anyone saw. Linhart, who started the fund and says he knows its six hundred thousand shareholders by their account numbers, lets the detective in, and Ostrá, the fund's secretary, one of three people with a key to the office, is asked where she was the night before the freeze. At the registry the clerk Doubravová will swear in any court that the signature matched the professor's specimen card; the orders themselves are sealed in cabinet number three, and the ledger shows shares worth one billion two hundred million crowns transferred out. A professor who says he signed nothing, a clerk who swears to the signature, nine orders locked in a cabinet: who moved the Lion Fund's shares?

From the series Velvet Shadows: a real 1990s Czech crime reimagined as a post-communist Prague noir radio mystery, performed by a full multi-voice AI cast with an original score and sound design.

Loosely inspired by a real Czech case of the 1990s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the fund's chairman, founder and staff, a university lecturer, the officials of a securities registry and of a ministry, the police and criminal investigators, the shareholders, and anyone suspected or accused of the theft — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. Where a real city, district, street, university or public body is mentioned, its part in this story is invented; the Lion Fund, its offices and its people are invented too. This is a work of fiction, not a factual account of any real person or institution. No real person is portrayed, and no real individual, company or organisation is accused of any act shown here.

Setting: Prague — June 1997.

Writer v2.7 — the studio's newest writing process: the plot is planned and checked by an AI story editor, then each act is drafted with the whole story in view and edited before a word is voiced — and then cast and performed with our new casting and voice direction.

Chapters:
0:00 The Evening Paper Among the Unsold Poets
1:39 Up the Stairs to the Professor's Door
3:25 Seals Across the Fund's Doors
5:34 Behind Frosted Glass in the Registry
7:10 Near Midnight in the Kapitán's Office
9:05 Back Through the Seals at Eight
10:36 Rys Knocks on the Chalked Door
12:35 Back Up to the Fund's Offices
14:34 A Coupon Book and a Bottle of Becherovka
16:10 Ostrá Fetched Back for Questioning
18:13 Back Down to the Registry with the Professor
19:53 Mist on Charles Bridge After Midnight
21:17 Rys Waiting, Notebook Open, Short of Breath
23:09 A Quarter of an Hour in a Bare Room
25:33 Wrapped in Mist Behind the Bookshop

#MonoNoirRadioDrama #NoirMystery #AudioDrama