The Frustrated Phoenix Matter

Originally Aired: April 27, 1954Johnny Dollar #212, "The Frustrated Phoenix Matter,"Johnny Dollar heads to Chicago to investigate a beneficiary change request on a $25,000 insurance policy held by Martin Venneberg, a once-brilliant novelist whose literary star burned out twenty years ago. The routine assignment becomes a murder case when Venneberg is found shot to death in his squalid one-room apartment. The prime suspect is his wife Helene, the policy's current beneficiary, who has mysteriously vanished five days before the killing. As Johnny digs into Venneberg's past, he encounters Richard Hanley, a literary critic who spent two decades trying to revive the writer's talent and lost his own wife Helene to Venneberg in the process. Hanley describes the author as a dissolute drunk who squandered his genius in alcohol and dissipation.Working with Lieutenant Borschak, Johnny learns that Venneberg was killed by two close-range shots from a Beretta automatic around 11 p.m., with the body discovered by eccentric bohemian poet Dalton Towler at 3 a.m. With no witnesses and few clues, the insurance policy appears to be the only motive. However, one curious detail emerges: a clean, oiled portable typewriter found in Venneberg's room, suggesting the burned-out writer may have been planning a comeback.