Rescued from the Archives:

Synopses for Lost ILAMs!

NEW Richard Bauman Synopsis September 22nd 2002; THE TEXAS BORDER SMUGGLERS!

As mentioned earlier, one of the unhappy realities of "I Love A Mystery" is that many of the shows have been lost forever, existing only in script form. Some of us have made an effort to create synopses of these lost ILAM stories to share with other fans.

Before I had the opportunity to obtain scripts for myself, I actually visited the U.S. Library of Congress in 1999 and took down detailed notes that were enough to create synopses for 4 shows (THE GRAVES OF WHAMPERJAW, TEXAS; MURDER HOLLYWOOD STYLE; YOU CAN'T PIN A MURDER ON NEVADA; FIND ELSA HOLBERG, DEAD OR ALIVE). I eventually found time last year to create another synopsis, THE BLUE PHANTOM MURDERS.

Because each synopsis takes so long, I'm glad that other ILAM fans have done similar efforts. Howard Hart created another ILAM show after taking detailed notes from the Library of Congress script copy for, THE GIRL IN THE GILDED CAGE. James Herman, visiting the Special Collections of Thousand Oaks Public Library also managed another detailed synopsis, this time for THE CORPSE IN COMPARTMENT C, CAR 76.

But for the most amazing Herculean ILAM synopsis effort, read on. I've only recently been in touch with Richard "Bear" Bauman who, unbeknownst to myself and other ILAM-ophiles, had been steadily working through the Morse Archives held in the Special Collection's Dept of Stanford University Library, creating synopses of over 40 I Love A Mystery stories! I had actually ran across his synopsis of "The Case of the Transplanted Castle" as published in the now defunct ILAM fanzine, "The A-One Gazette." I have been extraordinarily fortunate to not only gain contact with Richard, but he has graciously granted me permission to post all his ILAM synopses here!

As time permits, I'll eventually post all his wonderful synopses, but I'll start off with his very first effort, The Roxy Gangsters. Because the enormous volume of Richard Bauman's contribution, I'll be reorganizing this section of the web-site somewhat. I'll include links to the older ILAM synopsis still on this page, but I'll provide a new link to a section (which will hopefully grow) into the Richard Bauman ILAM Synopsis Project.

::Brian::

Note: I've split the earlier "I Love A Mystery" synopses into three different parts, each composed of 5 episodes, or about one week's worth of story as it would have originally aired. For Richard Bauman's more compact synopses, I'll be doing each story as one indivividual page.