Adventure in Manhattan

George Melville is a crime novelist who is enlisted by the editor of the Daily Gazette to put some imagination into the stories his newspaper is running. Melville has a good knowledge of criminology and an uncanny knack of foretelling when crimes are to be committed. Bane the editor takes a gamble on printing Melville's sensational predictions and it pays off. Melville's special obsession is his hunch that an art thief named Andre Berle is still alive and is behind the robbery of a very valuable ruby. Berle is thought by everybody else to have died four years earlier.

Melville's fellow newspaper journalists cannot stand his cockiness especially when he proves to be a whizz-kid on the pool table as well. Mystery really enters the movie when a blonde with a sob story gets involved with Melville. The best shadowy scenes of the film are when he keeps returning to the house that he's been told belongs to her estranged husband. But then Melville's ego takes a bashing.

This has a good cast. For mystery buffs Reginald Owen as a theatrical producer and Thomas Mitchell as Bane the editor are the pick of the players. But one elaborate hoax after another might prove a bit tiresome for genre fans generally. This film is unconventional and a lot of the intrigue elements are missing. So perhaps of limited interest to mystery addicts but I had to chuckle at the hilarious scene right at the end.