In the make-the-cops-look-stupid school of detecting, Hildegarde Withers is The Professor-a schoolteacher with a passion for sleuthing and a penchant for withering superiority when it comes to her smart but not wise professional counterpart, Inspector Piper. The roles of Withers and Piper "could have been written for craggy Edna May Oliver and sour and dubious James Gleason," writes William K. Everson in The Detective in Film. "Despite Hildegarde's constant one-upmanship in proving him wrong, a genuine affection exists between the two that is never allowed to develop into anything sticky." The Penguin Pool Murder, the first of a short-lived but popular series based on Stuart Palmer's characters, is also the most fun in opening with the discovery of a stiff among the suspicious looking penguins of the New York Aquarium, where Miss Withers just happens to have taken her innocent charges for a day's visit.