This gaslight noir tells the story of a likable if fairly passive accountant (Philip Marshall, played by Charles Laughton) married to an absolute harridan, who finally snaps and commits murders. Remarried to a charming and age-inappropriate friend (Ella Raines), Marshall seems to be having a stroke of good fortune until an irritatingly persistent Scotland Yard detective begins a campaign of low-grade harassment. When the sinister, wife-beating drunk next door (Henry Daniell, incidentally one of the best Moriartys in the Sherlock Holmes film canon) attempts to blackmail Marshall, the temptation to snuff out a looming threat and an everyday villain proves too appealing to resist. Featuring an oddly procedural reconstruction of the first crime The Suspect is fundamentally noir in its sensibility even if, in the end, the Production Code ensures our sympathies are frustrated.

Brian Donlevy stars as Walter Williams, a successful businessman whose faithless wife (Helen Walker) sets him up to be murdered by her sleazebag lover. Bludgeoned unconscious and left for dead, Walter catches a ride in a moving van and discovers that his assailant was killed in an accident immediately afterward. Finding a body burned beyond recognition, the authorities initially conclude that the dead man is Walter, who pauses awhile in a small town in Idaho, working as a mechanic and meeting a local girl (Ella Raines). When his wife is charged with murder he returns to his old life only to experience a sudden reversal. Charles Coburn– whose screen persona is a thousand times more appealing than his real-life political convictions– plays the Irish-American detective on the verge of retirement whose instincts and energy help solve the riddle.