Suspense - Radio’s Outstanding Theater of Thrills

Originally Aired: April 12, 1955
Suspense #593, "The Lunch Kit," Jonathan reluctantly helps his embittered father construct a devastating weapon disguised as an ordinary thermos bottle. Filled with nitroglycerin and fitted with a timer set to detonate at 6:30 in the morning, the deadly device goes into Jonathan's lunch kit as he heads to work the night shift at an industrial plant. His elderly coworker Mike carpools with him, completely unaware of the lethal cargo. Once inside the plant, Jonathan leaves the lunch kit in his locker and tries to work normally, but his nerves betray him. He obsessively checks the time, makes careless mistakes, and eventually collapses from the strain. When the plant doctor confines him to the dispensary and gives him sedated milk to help him rest, Jonathan's panic escalates. Unable to access his locker with the ticking bomb inside, and fighting against medication forcing him to sleep, he faces a desperate race against time as the deadly detonation hour approaches and his control over the situation slips away.

Originally Aired: April 5, 1955
Suspense #592, "Zero Hour," presents Ray Bradbury's chilling tale of an innocent children's game with sinister implications. Mrs. Morris watches with mild amusement as her energetic daughter Mink and the neighborhood children obsessively play a new game called Invasion, gathering odd items like pots, pans, and tools while following mysterious instructions. Mink excitedly explains that a being named Drill is teaching the children how to help Martians invade Earth, using kids under eleven because adults are too busy to notice what happens under rose bushes and on lawns. When Mrs. Morris receives a call from her friend Helen in New York, she learns that children across the country are all playing the same game, each one preparing for "Zero Hour" at five o'clock.
As the afternoon wears on and five o'clock approaches, Mrs. Morris grows increasingly uneasy. Mink casually mentions they'll have to "get rid of" the grownups after the invasion and recites strange sequences of numbers and instructions. What began as charming child's play takes on an increasingly ominous tone as Mrs. Morris realizes that perhaps Drill isn't imaginary after all, and the invasion the children are so eagerly preparing for might be terrifyingly real.

Originally Aired: March 29, 1955
Suspense #591, "Give Me Liberty," follows Paul French, a man who embezzled a quarter of a million dollars and managed to hide it before his conviction. As French is being transported to prison by a detective, handcuffed for the journey, fate intervenes in the form of a spectacular train wreck. In the chaos and flames, French sees his opportunity for freedom, but there's one critical problem: he cannot find the key to his handcuffs. In a desperate bid for survival and escape, he makes a brutal choice, switching identities with the injured detective before fleeing into the darkness.
What follows is a harrowing odyssey as French struggles to survive in the countryside while shackled by the very symbol of his captivity. Exhausted, starving, and unable to remove the handcuffs, he encounters a suspicious farm woman and her watchful dog, faces armed pursuers, and finally resorts to scavenging through garbage behind a roadside diner. When a young boy discovers him in this degraded state, French must decide how far he'll go to secure his liberty and reclaim his hidden fortune. His carefully planned future hangs in the balance, dependent on breaking free from the steel that binds him.

Originally Aired: March 15, 1955
In Suspense #589, "The Game," two restless teenagers, Pen and Red, find themselves bored on a lazy summer afternoon with nothing to do. What begins as an innocent search for entertainment takes a dark turn when Red suggests they get drunk at Pen's empty house. As the whiskey flows and inhibitions fade, Red begins needling Pen, calling him soft and chicken, questioning his courage in front of their friends. The verbal sparring escalates until Red proposes a terrifying way for Pen to prove his manhood: Russian roulette.
With Red's taunts ringing in his ears and alcohol clouding his judgment, Pen agrees to play the deadly game. Red retrieves Pen's father's .38 revolver, and they sit across from each other at a table scarred by childhood memories. They remove five bullets, leaving one in the chamber. A coin flip determines who goes first, and the ceremony begins. As Pen lifts the heavy gun for the first time in his life, the two boys enter into a contest where backing down means humiliation, but continuing could mean death.

Originally Aired: March 8, 1955
Suspense #588, "Nobody Ever Quits," a man desperately trying to escape his criminal past finds himself trapped when his old life catches up with him at the worst possible moment. Walt runs a remote mountain gas station with his pregnant wife Sally, but when a customer named Battaglia stops for fuel during an approaching blizzard, Walt's carefully constructed new identity begins to crumble. Battaglia recognizes Walt as Joey Perino, a man from back in Jersey City, and despite Walt's denials, the threat becomes undeniable when Big Pete himself calls the station. Pete ominously tells Joey that "the boys miss him" and that he's coming to talk in person.
As the storm intensifies and the mountain pass becomes increasingly dangerous, Walt faces an impossible situation. His wife is pregnant and due in April, her father is stranded in Victorville unable to return through the blizzard, and somewhere in the snowy darkness, dangerous men from his past are closing in. Walt must now confront whether anyone can truly leave their old life behind, especially when that life won't let them go.

Originally Aired: March 1, 1955
Suspense #587, "The Screaming Woman," presents a chilling tale of childhood terror that no adult will believe. Young Margaret Leary is cutting through Mr. Kelly's vacant lot on Thanksgiving Day when she hears something horrifying: a woman's desperate screams coming from beneath tons of freshly dumped dirt and debris. The voice seems to be coming from the area where a large concrete pipe, the neighborhood children's makeshift fort, has been completely buried. Frantic and terrified, Margaret races home to get help, but her pleas fall on deaf ears. Her mother dismisses her story while cooking Thanksgiving dinner, and her father treats it as nothing more than childish imagination run wild.
Despite Margaret's increasingly desperate attempts to convince her parents, they refuse to take her seriously. Her father reluctantly accompanies her to the lot after dinner, but when the screaming woman falls silent in his presence, he becomes convinced his daughter has a fever and locks her in her room for the rest of the day. Now Margaret faces an impossible dilemma: a woman is buried alive and dying beneath the ground, and she is the only one who can hear the screams.

Originally Aired: February 22, 1955
Suspense #586, "Waiting," three women endure an agonizing vigil as the hours tick down to Norman Landon's execution for the murder of Sheila Warrener. His wife Eileen, consumed by love and doubt, struggles with the terrible uncertainty of whether her husband actually committed the crime. Norman's sister Harriet clings desperately to his innocence, treasuring a final letter from her brother while tensions simmer with Eileen. Their mother, Mrs. Martinson, maintains a cold facade of religious resignation, speaking of God's will while barely concealing her judgment of Norman's moral failings. As the clock moves toward eleven, attorney Mr. Mailer frantically pursues one last hope: a witness from Mexico who claims to have seen a woman fleeing the apartment building the night of the murder.
The confined setting amplifies the women's conflicting emotions as buried resentments surface. Eileen's tortured admission that she still loves Norman despite everything, Harriet's fierce loyalty, and Mrs. Martinson's bitter pronouncements create an atmosphere of suffocating tension while precious minutes slip away and the question of Norman's guilt remains devastatingly unresolved.

Originally Aired: February 17, 1955
Suspense #585, "The Man with the Steel Teeth," presents the harrowing tale of Arthur Henderson Lutrel, an American newspaper correspondent who finds himself suddenly arrested at the Moscow Opera and thrown into the notorious Lubyanka Prison. His captor is Inspector Golovin of the MVD, a peculiar little man with a remarkable set of stainless steel teeth who presents Lutrel with fabricated espionage charges. Golovin demands a confession linking Lutrel to executed Soviet citizens, claiming he used personal influence to encourage sabotage and treason. When Lutrel refuses to confess despite psychological torture and sleep deprivation, the situation takes a bizarre turn.
After passing out from exhaustion, Lutrel awakens to find his cell door mysteriously open. Seizing what appears to be an impossible opportunity, he makes his escape through the empty prison, dons an abandoned coat, and drives an MVD limousine toward the American embassy. Just as safety seems within reach, Lutrel spots the unmistakable figure of Inspector Golovin waiting by the embassy gates, and a frantic chase through Moscow's streets begins, leaving Lutrel to wonder if his escape was ever real at all.

Originally Aired: February 10, 1955
Suspense #584, "Diagnosis of Death," a medical mistake triggers a race against time when Simon Davis overhears what he believes is his own fatal diagnosis. While waiting in Dr. Jim Kirk's office, Simon inadvertently hears Nurse Herman reading a lab report over the phone describing a malignant condition with only one to three months to live. Believing the diagnosis is his own, Simon flees the office without waiting for his actual appointment. When Dr. Kirk realizes what has happened, he frantically contacts Simon's wife Martha to explain that her husband is not dying and the report was for another patient. However, Simon has already begun putting his affairs in order, writing mysterious letters and closing down his business.
As Dr. Kirk, Martha, and Simon's secretary Anne attempt to track him down, alarming signs emerge that Simon may be planning something drastic. With a letter addressed to Martha already in the mail and Simon's whereabouts unknown, they contact the police. The question becomes whether they can find Simon before he makes an irreversible decision based on a diagnosis that was never his.

Originally Aired: February 3, 1955
Suspense #583, "A Killing in Abilene," starring Parley Baer, tells the gripping story of Jeff Mander, a man who has spent two years tracking down Lee Burridge, the killer of his brother Seth. When Jeff arrives in the desolate mountain town of Pleasant Valley, he finds the residents gathered around a freshly dug grave, where they've just uncovered the body of Fred Coston, beaten to death in the same brutal manner as Jeff's brother. The townspeople, led by the vengeful Ben Chaffee, are convinced Burridge is guilty and are determined to take justice into their own hands through a lynching.
Jeff faces mounting hostility from the angry mob, who see him as an interfering stranger. Despite his hatred for Burridge, Jeff insists on taking him back to Abilene for a proper trial, honoring the promise he made to his brother's widow. When Jeff confronts Burridge at his isolated hut, the encounter turns violent. As Sheriff Jake Garvey struggles to maintain order and the townspeople prepare to hunt Burridge down at nightfall, Jeff finds himself caught between his quest for lawful justice and a town hell-bent on frontier vengeance.