Peter Whalley was Coronation Street’s longest-serving writer, scripting 601 episodes between 1979 and 2014. His other works included TV’s Albion Market and Castles, 40 radio plays and 10 novels, and in 2009 he was presented with a Special Achievement Award at the British Soap Awards. Collected here are 14 of his finest radio crime dramas and thrillers, with full casts including Lee Ingleby, Joanne Froggatt, Tracy Wiles, Robert Pickavance, Jason Done, Lyndsey Marshal, David Calder and Paula Tilbrook.
Our opening play, The Disappearance, is a compelling psychological thriller about a landlord and tenant who are not who they say they are, while in The Trial, Molly finds that falling in love with a stranger has never been scarier. In Who Shot Ada Tansey?, there’s turmoil behind the scenes of a Northern soap opera when the leading lady is murdered, and after a death at a dinner party, the remaining diners become suspects in The Absent Guest. The Blackpool Detective follows actor-turned-PI Ben Lomax, as he takes over his father’s investigation agency and is faced with a serious case. A terrible lie is about to be revealed in The Test, as the reinvestigation of an old murder threatens to turn John Newland’s life upside down. And in When Last I Saw You, the law’s failure leads a desperate woman to impose her own justice.
A man picks up a female hitch-hiker in The Longest Journey – but both are concealing a secret. Blackmail is the theme of the six-part mystery serial Letters of Introduction, whereas The Second Son centres around identity, fraud and self-belief. When Lauren’s estranged husband unexpectedly returns, his motives for walking out on her become clear in Reasons for Leaving. Hoodlums finds a gang of bank robbers reunited after years in prison: but old age hasn’t blunted their criminal instincts. Nosy neighbours, a missing wife and a husband suspected of killing her are at the heart of Neighbourhood Watch, and in Nearly Dead, an old man is murdered in a geriatric hospital. With the other residents lost in their own worlds, can DI Halliwell fight through a fog of confusion to find the truth?
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