In a bluesy, noirsy paean to postwar disillusionment, Alan Ladd returns home from WWII to find his wife unfaithful, and himself the prime suspect in her subsequent murder. Turning amateur detective to save his skin from a corrupt and inept police, he is aided by the seductive sympathies of wisecracking Veronica Lake, who has turned up as mysteriously as everything else in his life has been turned upside down. Together they dive into a multi-layered (and multi-perspectived) mystery to rival the inherent confusion of The Big Sleep. Although scriptwriter Raymond Chandler evidently began the project as a Philip Marlowe novel, Ladd's Johnny Morrison is a much more private eye. Shell-shocked amnesia becomes both mood and metaphor, with William Bendix imparting a powerful tragi-comic presence in the role of Ladd's war buddy who has lost more than just his illusions in the fray.