The Case of the Abandoned Overcoat · Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases

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

A Soviet defector walks out of a Washington restaurant on a raw December night, leaving his overcoat on the chair; by morning he is inside the Soviet compound, and the young American who lost him has flown to London to ask for Sherlock Holmes. What kind of man walks off into the cold and leaves his coat behind?

Read the story and the full transcript: https://matezz.com/episodes/the-case-of-the-abandoned-overcoat-sherlock-holmes-the-new-cases/

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

London, December 1987. The boys of Baker Street are letting off bangers left over from Bonfire Night, and Holmes, who has kept to the sofa, has propped the London telephone directory against the bookcase and is firing his revolver into it: one more bang on a night like this passes unremarked, and so far only Mrs Hudson has noticed. Then a transatlantic line rings. Inspector Rutherford of the Washington police, calling from the Foxhall district, says that a young American named Kemp has landed in London asking for Holmes by name, in trouble over Saturday night and unwilling to talk to anyone else. Kemp turns out to be a young woman, and on the flight across the Atlantic she tells Holmes and Watson that the man she has lost is a Soviet defector named Danilov. At Chez Marcel, the Foxhall restaurant where he dined, she shows them the table where he sat with his back to the wall and the chair where his grey wool coat hung; Lorraine, the waitress, was working that Saturday night. Holmes insists on walking the defector's route himself, with Rutherford: a long climb uphill that the man made without his coat, his wallet or a cab, to the iron gate of the Soviet compound. In Kemp's two rooms above a dry cleaner's lie the letter from her employers suspending her pending an inquiry and a folded paper found in the coat's inside pocket. Among the dripping pines of Virginia, Mr Garrett, who questioned Danilov for months, receives them at the very table where it was done. And at the Soviet gate, where Rutherford's men hold the reporters behind a rope, Danilov himself, in a borrowed overcoat, answers Holmes's question about the coat with a question of his own: "You cross an ocean to ask me of a coat?"

From the series Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases: a real crime of the 1980s reimagined as a classic Sherlock Holmes radio mystery, performed by a full multi-voice AI cast, with sound design and a light score that stays under the story.

Loosely inspired by a real event of the 1980s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the defector, his young escort, the intelligence officers and Soviet officials around him, the restaurant staff, the investigators and the police — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. Where a real city, state, public body or newspaper is mentioned, its part in this story is invented; the restaurant, the safe house, the hotel and the streets named in it 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: London and Washington, D.C. — December 1987.

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 A Raw December Evening and a Telephone Directory
2:41 Chez Marcel and a Coat on a Chair
4:31 Walking the Defector's Route Uphill
5:49 Two Rooms Above a Dry Cleaner's
7:10 Closing Time, Chairs Up on the Tables
8:23 Dripping Pines Out in Virginia
10:02 Reporters at the Soviet Gate
11:19 Packing Up the Defector's Room
13:03 Near Midnight in Kemp's Kitchen
14:32 A Black Car Idling in the Compound
15:41 Back Down the Hill Toward the River
16:25 Typewriter Keys at the Foxhall Station
17:41 A Single Lamp in the Empty Restaurant
18:46 Coffee Across the Bar After Hours
20:03 One Arm in His Coat, Late That Night
21:40 The Small Hours, Pacing in a Dressing-Gown
22:48 A Little After Ten at the Station
24:40 Tea in Baker Street After the Plasterer

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