- with these words and a cliffhanger ends every episode of the story of a larger-than-life thief who rises to be the most famous gangster of the 1920s Chicago, if not the world.
At the beginning of our story, Dickie Dick Dickens is an unremarkable small-time thief of the roaring 20s. He is perfectly content with his life by the side of his faithful fiancee, Effie Marconi, playing wiener waltzer (he dislikes Jazz) and solitaire, and when the need and opportunity arises, helping himself to some money.
But as luck have it, the humble pickpocket accidentally gets on the wrong side of the city's crime boss, Jim Cooper (in gangster circles known as Pigheaded Jim). The events quickly roll forward from then with Dickie getting in ever more dangerous adventures and, on the merit of surviving them, rising higher and higher in the social circles of Chicago's thiefdom. Armed only by his unparalleled charm and wit, with the support of his friends and the occasional, unavoidable resort to violence, Dickie repeatedly gets the better of doggedly persevering police commissioners and unscrupulous gangsters.
The story is as eventful, full of twists and turns, as lighthearted. Come forgers, thieves, politicians, con artists, hitmen, faux-revolutionaries, or detectives against him, with sheer wit and audacity, Dickie finds the way out of every impossible situation. At the end of each storyline, the brave gets rewarded, the credulous tricked, the rich fleeced, the conmen conned, and violent guys discreetly meet their violent ends.
The short episodes are segued by two narrators who excitedly follow the events together with listeners, while often providing background information and commentary on the plot. At the major turning points, they reverently cite Dickie's own reflections from his memoir which he wrote 14 years after the events in Sing-Sing (and which had been translated to 15 languages).
Superb this crime parody is, it is the format that really brings the story to life. In the case of audiobooks, a single narrator has the demanding task of capturing the listener's attention for many hours. In radio plays, the combination of various voices, background noises, and music arrests the imagination (which my son calls "Kopfkino") almost irresistibly. Every piece plays its part excellently, but none of them better than the amazing voice actor impersonating Dickie, Carl-Heinz Schrot. The German language is famously not something that anyone associates with charm, humor, and joie de vivre, but listening to Schrot makes one really wonder why. The man brings the mischievous, gallant, and occasionally naive hero to life like magic.
The radio play is available in the format of more than 20 hours of audiobooks. The only downside is that there is no further appearance of Carl-Heinz Schrot as Dickie, and there will never be. When I was eagerly looking for more sequels, to my astonishment I discovered that Dickie Dick Dickens was a real radio play between 1957 and 1960, produced by the Bavarian Broadcasting Organisation. It ran until 1976, but after 1960 with a different cast.
It wasn't just a smart choice of a modern audiobook imitating a classic radio play. It really is a genuine article, a gem from the past.
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