Blackstone The Magic Detective Radio · Ed Jerome

Blackstone Detective - The Icy Touch

March 16, 2026·13 min·1 clip

Blackstone exposes Kenberry's theft of the medallion during the magic trick, leading to a frantic search and recovery.

1. 'The Icy Touch' is an episode of Blackstone the Magic Detective in which a $50,000 rare medallion is stolen at a private party using a duplicate-and-switch scheme. 2. Blackstone narrates the story to his companions Don and Rhoda from his study, using the recovered duplicate medallion — given to him as a souvenir — as a prop. 3. The episode's central puzzle is how Blackstone identified the thief in a room full of trusted guests when the theft happened in the dark. 4. Herbert Maybrook is described as 'one of the greatest collectors of the arts in this country' and the medallion as worth $50,000 — the only one of its kind in the world, a piece of early Greek artistry. 5. Maybrook shows the medallion to his guests and then challenges Blackstone to make it vanish, despite Blackstone's objection to handling something so valuable. 6. Blackstone agrees and sets up a trick: the medallion is placed in a goblet under a plate, Blackstone is tied to a chair, and a guest named Kenberry is asked to hold his shoulders in the dark. 7. When the lights are restored, the medallion is gone — but Blackstone immediately announces it was not his trick that caused the disappearance; the medallion was stolen. 8. Kenberry had spent weeks preparing: he commissioned a duplicate medallion and planned to switch it during the party. 9. The switch happened while guests were distracted watching Blackstone being tied up — Kenberry palmed the real medallion and placed the cold duplicate back in the goblet. 10. Blackstone detected the substitution when Kenberry passed him the medallion: every other guest had held the original until it was warm, but Kenberry's pass was cold. 11. Armed with this knowledge, Blackstone palmed the cold fake medallion before being tied up, allowing him to declare the theft and demand a search of the guests. 12. When accused, Kenberry tried to shift blame onto a Rhoda-adjacent figure, claiming the theft was a 'scheme of Blackstone's and mine,' but Blackstone produced the duplicate as proof of Kenberry's plan. 13. Maybrook recovers the real medallion from Kenberry's pocket and gives Blackstone the duplicate as a souvenir. 14. The episode connects the theft's resolution to a classic magician's observation: misdirection — keeping an audience focused on the spectacular (the ropes, the trick) rather than the mundane (who is holding the coin). 15. The second segment demonstrates a coin-temperature trick: Blackstone places a dozen dated pennies in a hat, asks a guest to pick one and hold it, then pass it to a second person before returning it to the hat — and locates the chosen coin by finding the one that is warm among the cold coins. 16. The trick's punchline — 'getting warmer' — directly mirrors the medallion deduction, making the magic trick an explicit echo of the mystery's solution. 17. Blackstone suggests pre-chilling the coins in an ice chest before performing for the best effect. 18. The production style is a brisk ensemble drama with comedy between Blackstone, Rhoda, and Don framing the mystery segments. 19. Fans of locked-room mysteries, clever physical deductions, and the mechanics of stage illusions will appreciate the tight thematic link between the story and the trick. 20. Listeners expecting character development, moral complexity, or modern pacing will find the episode too compressed and its villain too quickly dispatched.

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