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

On the evening an indicted godfather holds his Thursday coffee hour in Prague, a shot bursts his tall window and scatters glass over the cups. Who fired it?

Listen as a podcast, with full transcripts: https://mono-noir.transistor.fm/

Prague, March 2004. Fog drifts off the Vltava as Pavel, a Malá Strana bookseller, waits behind his shop with the evening paper, and his friend Zima, a weary detective, climbs in from the wet. The headline says the godfather Kolář has been indicted, and court bailiffs with a locksmith have until Friday to box his entire archive for the state attorney. Forty crates, perhaps more, of receipts, tapes and photographs, and nobody in the city knows whose faces are in them. Zima doesn't mean to touch the paper. He means to watch who grows nervous before the seals go on. Days later the two visit Dagmar, the newspaper's editor, who is hungry for something to fill tomorrow's page. They talk of the godfather's famous Thursday coffee hours: the same room, the same tall window, ministers who sat with him off the record. Indicted is not convicted, Zima reminds her, and Kolář still keeps his table that very evening. Then the shot comes. Irena, the housekeeper who has poured the coffee for thirty years, receives the pair in the ruined room. She speaks of a kettle singing, a window kept shut against the cold since October, and a fifth cup nobody will lift. Who was in that room that evening, and what did each of them see?

From the series Velvet Shadows: a real post-communist Prague case reimagined as a modern noir radio mystery, performed by a full multi-voice AI cast with an original score and sound design.

Loosely inspired by a real Czech case of the 2000s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including a bookseller, a newspaper editor, a housekeeper, a night watchman, a crime boss, 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 newspaper, the firm and the house 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, March 2004 — with Malá Strana and Lipenská Street.

Chapters:
0:00 Fog Over Malá Strana
1:41 Page One, Page Five
3:36 The Night Watchman Takes Tea
5:51 Glass Over the Coffee Cups
7:54 Nails Driven Into an Era
9:39 Evidence by the Tin Stove
11:36 A Quiet Street at Mid-Morning
12:58 Back Across Town
14:29 Midnight in the Shot-Torn Room
16:22 Two Facts and a Nightcap
17:57 Morning at the Bookshop Counter
19:42 A Cold Cup, a Warm Question
22:00 Questions Among Bare Shelves
24:06 Grey Light on the Street
25:49 Below the House Before Dawn
27:31 Midnight Bells, Quiet Street

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