The Case of the Harlan Park Gold · Holmes LA

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

In Los Angeles, a junkman finds stolen gold-plated Laurel statuettes in a supermarket dumpster and has the best morning of his life: a reward, his name in the papers, a handshake from the Guild. By evening the police want his fingerprints and he is begging Sherlock Holmes for help. Who stole the Laurels?

🎧 Full episode · full-cast radio drama, 28 min. Holmes LA: a modern Sherlock Holmes audio drama set in Los Angeles, performed by a full cast.
Hörspiel · audiokniha · rozhlasová hra (English audio, English captions)

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.

Los Angeles, May 2002. A thin rain ticks on the porch of the converted craftsman house above Echo Park, where Holmes has spent the day dragging a scanned photograph down the only telephone line while Dr. Watson, who is on call, needs it. The first owners of the house, says Holmes, are arriving from the top down, and so far it is all hats. Watson yanks the cord, Holmes protests that Watson has stopped them at the eyebrows, and the telephone rings at once. It is Lieutenant Navarro of homicide, calling from a payphone on her last quarter: a junkman had the best morning of his life today, and tonight he is begging for Holmes's help. At his chain-link lot Dale has bought every paper on the block, six of them, all folded to the same page, because his name is in every one. The police towed his cart this afternoon as evidence, the man at the liquor store calls him a fence who was told where to dig, and though the reward is thirty-five thousand dollars and two seats on Laurel night, tonight the police want his fingerprints. Holmes asks him straight out whether he found it honestly. Behind the supermarket, Navarro stands at a green dumpster nursing a cold coffee. The Chief, she says, has had a call from somebody with a star on Hollywood Boulevard. Fifty-five Laurels in gold plate came off a truck at a freight terminal and walked, close to five hundred pounds of them, and Laurels turned up in the bin she is guarding. Nobody gets that lucky, she says, not in a dumpster, not ever. Before it is over Holmes and Watson will also walk that freight dock at night and meet its night crew. Who took the Laurels, and why leave a fortune in a dumpster?

From the series Holmes LA: a real Los Angeles crime reimagined as a modern Sherlock Holmes radio mystery, performed by a full multi-voice AI cast with an original score and sound design.

Loosely inspired by a real Los Angeles case from the early years of this century. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the man who found the statuettes, the workers and supervisors of a freight terminal, the officials of a prize-giving body, the police and other investigators, and anyone suspected or accused of the crime — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. Where a real city, district, street, company or public body is mentioned, its part in this story is invented; the freight terminal, the prize-giving body and the places 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: Los Angeles — May 2002.

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 Rain, a Shrieking Modem and a Telephone That Rings
2:25 The Junkman's Lot, Six Papers Folded to One Page
4:03 A Green Dumpster Behind the Supermarket
5:22 A Quarter to Five, a Borrowed Shopping Cart
6:47 A Plywood Shed, Dale on a Crate, Holmes Pacing
8:04 Orange Lights and Open Trailers on a Night Dock
9:43 The Supervisor's Glass Office, a View of Every Door
11:14 A Basement Evidence Cage Under Fluorescent Tubes
12:35 A Bench of Two Pallets and a Plank in the Yard
14:14 Back in the Glass Office, the Forklifts Shut Out
15:45 Drawer by Drawer Through the Filing Cabinet
16:53 Holmes's Car in the Lot With the Engine Off
17:50 A Plywood Gatehouse With a Space Heater
19:36 The Following Night Back on the Dock
21:27 The Locker Room, Dented Steel Doors
22:59 The Smokers' Plank, One Lit Window Up on the Dock
24:25 Door Four and a Long Walk Down the Dock
26:15 The Last Entry in the Case Log, Modem Unplugged

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