The Sick Uncle · Istanbul Confidential

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

General Dorn, the German commander on Chios, vanished from the island four nights ago. The German consulate swears he was carried into Turkey, Ankara fears a pretext for war in Thrace, and the police director, writing in his own hand with no letterhead, asks the Istanbul detective Kemal Arslan to look into it quietly. Whatever became of the general, whom does his vanishing serve?

🎧 Full episode of Istanbul Confidential: a wartime espionage radio drama set in neutral Istanbul, an audio 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.

Istanbul, autumn 1942. The police director's note has come up the stairs in a constable's pocket to the rooms above a glass-roofed arcade, and Captain Demir, who tells this story, reads it aloud to the detective Kemal Arslan at the window. By noon the two stand in the lobby of the Lalezar Hotel, at the desk where the trunk lines come in. Galina, who works the switchboard, lays both hands flat on her trunk ledger and will show it only to the management; Ashby, a hotel regular, says he has begged her for two years for one free call to Izmir; and Ingeborg, the German consulate's secretary, arrives to sign for General Dorn's trunk and his hatbox. At police headquarters in Sirkeci, Inspector Tunç keeps the pair forty minutes on a bench, then tells them the director wants them shown things, quietly. At the consulate in Gümüşsuyu the general's Istanbul diary lists his days and not one evening. A note with no letterhead, a ledger kept shut, a trunk signed for by a secretary and a diary with no evenings: where is General Dorn?

From the series Istanbul Confidential: a real event of the 1940s reimagined as a classic noir radio mystery, performed by a full multi-voice AI cast with an original score and sound design.

Loosely inspired by a real event of the 1940s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including a German general and the officers and soldiers of his command, the staff of a consulate and of a hotel, the police and their inspectors, government officials, the people of an occupied island, the investigators, and anyone suspected or accused of any part in the general's disappearance — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. Where a real city, district, island, public body or newspaper is mentioned, its part in this story is invented; the hotel, the police offices and the consulate 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: Istanbul — autumn 1942.

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 Police Director's Note at the Window
1:27 Potted Palms and German Voices at the Lalezar
3:37 Forty Minutes on a Bench at Sirkeci
5:03 Through the Consulate Gate at Gümüşsuyu
6:31 Lamps Out Behind Galina's Switchboard
7:57 The Case Laid Out Among the Tea Glasses
9:25 Two Flights Up a Beyoğlu Passage
12:01 Gloves Pulled Off in the Lobby
14:03 Back Across the Emptied Lobby
15:33 The Bosphorus Black Beneath the Terrace Rail
17:17 A Typed Report and a Space Under a Name
18:50 Two Strapped Trunks Beside a Typewriter
20:49 Grey Light Over the Arcade Roof
22:38 Tunç Waiting on the Pier
24:22 Water Dripping Below Tunç's Office
26:12 A Yellow Morning in the Hotel Lobby

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