The Case of the Corvane Ledger · Holmes NYC

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

Overnight, cash machines across Midtown paid out one point nine million dollars, all in twenties. Nobody needed a crowbar: someone overseas had lifted the withdrawal limits on a batch of prepaid accounts, and the cards did the rest. Now a card processor's security chief wants Sherlock Holmes on the case before the banks open. Who emptied the machines?

🎧 Full episode · full-cast radio drama, 27 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, April 2015. In sleet, with the boiler dying by inches, Dr. Watson sits in his overcoat thumbing a third voicemail to the superintendent while Holmes lies flat on the floorboards diagnosing it by ear. Then someone leans on the doorbell: Ms Okafor, who runs security for a card processing firm, says somebody robbed cash machines all over Midtown last night, and she needs Holmes there before the banks open. Holmes calls it auditors' work until Watson points out that a whole neighbourhood was emptied in a single night. At the West Forty-Fifth Street branch four machines gape with their fronts swung wide and not a scratch on them, and the first twenty came out at ten past three. The manager, Teague, is braced for the auditors at nine and head office at ten. Captain Brandt, a homicide man on loan to the financial crimes task force, warns Holmes that his client's own company is the one whose system leaked. At the fraud desk of the bank that owns those machines, a night analyst named Maren, with eleven minutes before the next batch runs, watched it all go red and could flag the cards but not stop the cash. Who could empty a whole neighbourhood's cash machines in a single night?

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 bank managers and their staff, fraud analysts, card-company executives and security staff, hackers, anyone suspected or accused of the thefts, 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, public body, company or newspaper is mentioned, its part in this story is invented; the banks, the branch 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: Brooklyn and Midtown Manhattan, New York — April 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 Sleet, a Dying Boiler and a Third Voicemail
2:49 Four Cash Machines With Their Fronts Swung Wide
4:27 A Desk Beneath a Dead Fern
5:49 A Horseshoe of Screens on an Empty Floor
7:24 A Staff Door on the Alley at a Quarter to Five
8:51 Dawn, Before the Street Lamps Went Out
10:22 A Windowless Room Behind the Tellers' Line
11:42 A Glass Box Off the Banking Hall
13:25 Noon, and a Queue of Six
14:35 Radiators Knocking Like Applause
15:45 A Steel Bench Under a Strip Light
17:15 The Next Morning, a Newspaper Spread Open
18:15 Past Midnight, Monitors and Space Heaters
19:24 Four in the Morning, the Parlour Too Warm
20:33 Seven in the Morning, Screens Over to the Day Shift
22:01 A Little Before Nine, a Hat Pulled Low
23:37 A Table Bolted to the Floor, a Mirror That Was Not
25:50 Back in Brooklyn, the Heat on Full

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