Velvet and Gold · Holmes NYC

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

Paloma, a Chelsea dance instructor and Dr. Watson's patient, turns up at Sherlock Holmes's Brooklyn door with her engine still running. Her savings, eleven years of private lessons and no vacations, are in a fortune-teller's hands, and she wants them back. Who is Desmond, and why is his name on every bill Paloma got back?

🎧 Full episode · full-cast radio drama, 28 min. Holmes NYC: a modern Sherlock Holmes audio drama set in New York, 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.

Brooklyn, November 2015. Every window of the brownstone is open to the warm evening, and Dr. Watson, three weeks into a farm share's kohlrabi, watches Holmes sit with a jeweller's loupe and one muddy beet. What, Watson begs, does a person do with kohlrabi? Feed it to the tortoise, says Holmes, but Clyde will not touch it. Holmes would rather name the county the soil came from than help peel. Then an engine idles at the curb and the buzzer is held down, long and insistent: Paloma, a Chelsea dance instructor and Watson's patient, has been circling the block for an hour. She needs her savings back. Holmes calls it a job for a lawyer, but a few questions later he is calling for the coats. In her mirrored studio the tape on the floor runs straight into a wall she means to bring down; the owner has offered her the whole floor, and the down payment is thirty-four thousand dollars, eleven years of private lessons and no vacations. All of it is in the hands of Madame Odile, a fortune-teller who reads cards behind a lamplit window. The next afternoon, as Paloma brings Holmes and Watson in, a client is leaving: Ingrid, who lives three doors up and can never remember a coat. Before it is over Holmes and Watson will also keep watch from a café window and hear from a homicide captain named Rafferty, who owed Holmes one and notes that nobody is dead. Who is Desmond?

From the series Holmes NYC: a real New York 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 New York case of the 2010s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including a fortune-teller, her clients and their families, anyone suspected or accused of the crime, the prosecutors, the investigators, officials and the police — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. Where a real city, borough, state, street or public body is mentioned, its part in this story is invented; the parlor, the studio and the precinct 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: New York — November 2015.

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 Every Window Open, Kohlrabi Again, One Muddy Beet
2:46 A Mirrored Room Two Flights Up, a Class Due in Twenty Minutes
4:44 A Lamplit Window, a Bead Curtain and a Client Leaving
6:50 A Box of Lost Shoes and an Envelope on the Desk
8:26 Nine Sharp, the Third Window From the Door
9:26 A Café Window on the Parlor as the Streetlights Come On
10:46 The Morning Class Gone, a Mop and the Long Mirrors
12:09 A Walk-Up Door Open an Inch at Noon
13:46 Chairs Going Up at Closing, One Lamp Left on the Block
14:50 Behind the Bead Curtain Again, Two Teacups Rinsed in the Basin
16:18 The Window Table Again Before the Parlor Opens
17:54 Near Midnight, Two Stairs at a Time, a Chain on the Door
19:17 Eight the Next Morning, a Kettle Beginning to Sing
21:12 The Last Pupils Clattering Down, a Captain Coming Up
23:05 The First Table at the Café, the Parlor Lamp Coming On
24:10 The Brass Chime at Ten Past Nine, Cards Laid Out for Nobody
26:17 A Brooklyn Front Room Short of Chairs, a Tortoise Scraping Past

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