Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator

Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator was a detective drama aired on NBC Radio from October 3, 1951 to June 30, 1955.

William Gargan, who also played the better known television and radio detective Martin Kane, was the voice of New York eye Barrie Craig while Ralph Bell portrayed his associate, Lt. Travis Rogers. Craig's office was on Madison Avenue and his adventures were fairly standard PI fare. He worked alone, solved cases efficiently, and feared no man. As the promos went, he was "your man when you can't go to the cops. Confidentiality a specialty." A few years earlier Gargan had played a similar character in Martin Kane, Private Eye. Gargan also starred in the role in an unsuccessful 1952 TV pilot written and directed by Blake Edwards. It was presented on ABC's Pepsi-Cola Playhouse as "Death the Hard Way" (October 17, 1954).

This series has been produced with various spellings of the primary character name. Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator is one of the few detective radio series that had separate versions of it broadcast from both coasts. Even the spelling changed over the years. It was first "Barry Crane" and then "Barrie Craig". NBC produced it in New York from 1951 to 1954 and then moved it to Hollywood where it aired from 1954 to 1955.

Detective Barrie Craig (William Gargan) worked alone from his Madison Avenue office. Unlike his contemporaries Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, Craig had a laid-back personality, somewhat cutting against the popular hard-boiled detective stereotype. Others in the cast included Ralph Bell, Elspeth Eric, Parker Fennelly, Santos Ortega, Arnold Moss, Parley Baer, Virginia Gregg and Betty Lou Gerson.