From Headquarters

When a Broadway playboy is found dead, it's first thought to be a suicide, then a murder. Police Lt. Jim Stevens (George Brent) is on the case. Lou Winton (Margaret Lindsay), a Broadway performer with whom he's in love, is one suspect, but he's sure she didn't do it. It's obvious from her first questioning that she's protecting someone. It turns out to be her brother. Then there's a coke addict, Dolly White (Dorothy Burgess). And what about Anderzian (Robert Barrat)?

This mystery moves right along, and is more interesting than many of these films due to the use of actual police techniques from those days - examining a bullet, getting fingerprints, and my favorite, the use of IBM punch cards and a sorting machine to search a database. This may be the first display of that technology in film. Not only interesting, but fun to see, and also to note that those techniques in one form or another continue to be used.

George Brent is handsomer, I think, without his mustache, and does a good job here as an intelligent inspector.

Hugh Herbert is on hand as a bail bondsman, and Frank McHugh is on very quickly at the beginning. This is an old one!

See if it is on TCM - you'll enjoy it.