<p>The insidious Fleet Street barber slit his first throat in an 1846 “penny dreadful” one of those gaudy serialized novels that gleefully offered thrills and gore to sensation-hungry Victorians. Titled <em>The String of Pearls</em> it told of Sweeney Todd whose shop stood next to St. Dunstan’s Church just a few blocks from the Royal Courts of Justice. </P><P>On this site he robbed and murdered hundreds of customers. To dispose of their remains he carried them to an underground bakery of one Mrs. Lovett whose pie shop was a few blocks away. She ground the cadavers into stuffing for her meat pies the favorite midday repast of the lawyers who worked nearby and who got their shaves from Sweeney Todd. The man you lunched with yesterday could <em>be</em> your lunch today!</p> <p>Before the serial’s final chapters even hit the stands the first stage version pirated from the already published installments was packing them in at a London theater. </P><P>Blackstone Audio has commissioned this the first audio version of the tale from the Audie® award-winning Hollywood Theater of the Ear. With tongue in cheek writer/producer/director Yuri Rasovsky has gone all the way back to the original penny dreadful to imbue an old string of pearls with new luster—and fresh blood.</p></P><P>A Blackstone Audio production.</P>