Sounds of Darkness

The hard-boiled detectives of pulp and noir fiction are ultimately romantic figures, heroes that every guy wants to be and every dame wants to be with. These gumshoes are usually flawed individuals doing their best to live up to their personal codes of honor in a corrupt world, even after that world has damaged them in some important way.

Detective Lee Masters of Springbok Radio's The Sounds of Darkness had been one of the F.B.I.'s top agents until a few years back when a gun battle cost him his sight. Once an investigator, always an investigator, and despite his apparent handicap, and Masters 'needs to work" just so that he can go on being Lee Masters, as is pointed out by his secretary, Samantha Darlington (call her 'Sam', not 'Darling'). When Masters comes back to work, the Bureau assigns junior agent Johnny Bridges to be his eyes, and Bridges fulfills a similar role to Archie Goodwin in Nero Wolfe.

Masters' blindness is seen by the bad guys as a weakness, but our hero manages to turn it into a strength. For example, he lures murderers into his office where there is a hidden light switch. Plunged into darkness, Masters now has the upper hand because in the dark, "all cats are the same color".

The Sounds of Darkness broadcast from 1967 through 1974 on South Africa's Springbok Radio. The stories could have easily been part of a late-Sixties American TV police procedural. Not only does the protagonist work for the American Federal Bureau of Investigations, but all of the actors also use Yankee accents. Tony Jay, the actor who created Lee Masters, moved to South Africa from London in 1966, following a business opportunity. He had no previous acting experience but would write several episodes of Darkness and would write, act, and direct several other Springbok projects. When George Lucas was in the early stages of developing Star Wars (1977, 20th Century Fox), Jay was offered the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi but the part ultimately went to Sir Alec Guinness.

See also: Blind Tales in OTR, Fred Lowery, Helen Keller Collection, and George Shearing.