He talks his daughter Susan's fiancé, Tom Garrett (Dana Andrews), into participating in a hoax, in an attempt to expose the ineptitude of the city's hard-line district attorney.

However, while talking to his now-ex-fiancée Susan (Joan Fontaine), who has been trying to help him, Garrett inadvertently reveals that he knows the late woman's real name, which forces him to confess that the murder victim is actually his estranged wife, Emma Blucher, who had reneged on her promise to divorce him in Mexico.

[5] Dennis L. White describes the film as having "considerable impact, due not so much to visual style, but as to the narrative structure and mood and to the expertly devised plot, in which the turnabout is both surprising and convincing.

"[6] Stella Bruzzi, author of Men's Cinema: Masculinity and Mise en Scène in Hollywood, felt that the film plot was "overly schematic" and "motivated by a paradox", affecting "an invisible, transparent style while, at the same time, being all about surface and performance".

[7] Writer James McKay notes that Fontaine as Susan Spencer is "a little bit more forward than we normally expect, in a role that requires her to do all the running where her man's concerned".