Episode Details

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

A letter signed by men who call themselves the Brigade says an Istanbul hotel was telephoned a warning at ten past twelve, well before its wing came down. The switchboard operator who took the call swears it was half past. Which of them is right about the time?

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, the summer of 1946. The morning after a wing of the hotel comes down, its switchboard operator, Leyla, climbs the stair to the rooms above a glass-roofed arcade where the detective Kemal Arslan lives with Captain Haluk Demir, a stranger's spittle still on her sleeve. Every front page carries a letter from men who call themselves the Brigade, claiming that they telephoned the hotel at ten past twelve; the wing fell at twelve thirty-five. Leyla's clock, set every morning by the Ankara wireless, read half past when the call came, and she was given five minutes. Arslan says he believes her clock. Beneath the broken wing the police Komiser, Rüstem, who insists that Istanbul wants one quiet week, would rather the famous detective went home, while a Babıali reporter, Muazzez, keeps finding holes in his cordon. Back at the switchboard Leyla admits to a detail she never mentioned to the Komiser because it sounds like nonsense: under the caller's voice, a cuckoo called three times. On the front steps Rüstem recalls the noon when customs shut the hotel's Sultana café and its manageress, Naciye, swore that every one of them upstairs would pay. The hotel's lodgers are kept behind his rope. Arslan has a letter, a clock and a cuckoo that cannot count. Who was the man on the line?

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 hotel switchboard operator, a café manageress, a newspaper reporter, the hotel's guests and employees, the officials who worked in the wing, the victims and survivors, the rebels named in a newspaper letter, the investigators and the police — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. Where a real city, state, public body or newspaper is mentioned, its part in this story is invented; the hotel, its café and the offices 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 — summer 1946.

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 Leyla Climbs the Stair Before Eight
1:54 Beneath the Broken South Wing
3:45 Plugs Still in Their Rows
5:17 A Smoke on the Front Steps
6:45 Naciye Under the Customs Paper
8:29 Tea in the Komiser's Canvas Tent
10:22 A Cord Between Her Fingers
11:50 A Lobby Turned into a Pen
13:50 Dusk on the Roof Terrace
15:01 Statements at a Table by the Main Stair
16:22 An Army Envelope Under the Lamp
17:53 Wet Stone and Lamp Oil at Sirkeci
20:17 Past Midnight, Back on the Roof
21:34 The Next Day, Climbing Behind the Komiser
23:17 A Bare Table at the Emniyet
25:23 Down the Corridor, a Pace