Michael Shayne: Private Detective

This comes across as a stew of screwball comedy and whodunnit literary conventions. Within the story, we have Patterson, an avid mystery novel reader, occupying the position of the target movie-watcher.

Rather stagy and uncinematic, with bad acoustics, and the usual-for-the-period (bad) sped up camera tricks.

Nolan is the only one with an actual clue here...his stance is that of an actor playing a character playing several personas (each distinguished by putting on different voices)in order to flummox the cast of dimwits. This is a rough template for the far better "Fletch" movies.

The tracing by pencil of the paper imprints is spoofed in "Big Lebowski".