Last Day of October · Velvet Shadows

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

On the last day of October the President's son walks down to the gate of a Prague villa: a shout, the railings ringing, a van door. By morning he is found on the steps of an Austrian police station, and the President's wife has come down the Castle steps alone to ask the detective Antonín Zima to bring him home. Who seized him?

🎧 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, November 1996. The bookshop in Malá Strana has shut for the evening when the President's wife walks through it to the back office, where the detective Antonín Zima is correcting the accounts of the bookseller Pavel Hruška, who tells this story. She has come down the Castle steps alone and will not even sit. A police report of two lines and a rubber stamp says her stepson, Daniel Bartoš, was found on the steps of the police station at Stollenau, in Austria; she trusts no Prague policeman and wants Zima to bring him home. At the villa in Bubeneč a young police captain, Kapitán Jelínek, has no orders to show them anything, but the railings at the gate are bent inward at shoulder height, and the housekeeper's statement has Daniel walking down to the gate at supper time; the supper is still laid. In her private rooms at the Castle, with the tea going cold, paní Bartošová admits that she wants her husband out of the Castle. Then come the Interior Minister, Šebesta, on Letná, and a long drive south to meet Sergeant Pichler, who keeps the front desk at Stollenau. Who took the President's son from his own gate?

From the series Velvet Shadows: a real event of the 1990s 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 event of the 1990s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the President, his wife and his family, the ministers, officials and officers of an interior ministry, the police and their captains, the staff of a border post, of a police station and of a prosecutor's office, the investigators, and anyone suspected or accused of seizing the President's son — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. Where a real city, district, street, public body, business or border crossing is mentioned, its part in this story is invented; the villa, the ministry offices, the police stations and the border post 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: Prague — November 1996.

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 President's Wife Will Not Sit
1:34 At the Villa Gate in Bubeneč
3:21 Tea Going Cold in Her Rooms at the Castle
4:55 The Interior Minister's Office on Letná
6:38 Floor Polish at the Police Station in Stollenau
9:07 Road Dust at the Criminal Police
10:15 Summoned Back Within the Hour
11:41 The Express to Vienna
12:43 After Dark Among the Unsold Books
13:34 All of Them in One Room by Eleven
15:44 The Evening Paper Beat Us Up the Hill
17:34 Near Midnight, One Lamp Still Burning
19:20 Before Light, in the Fog Below Letná
20:19 A Stranger on the Minister's Carpet
22:42 Down the Stairs Two at a Time
24:25 A Yard from a Thin Door
25:47 Fog Over Prague, Back Through the Shop

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