Errol Flynn could play comedies and enjoyed them a lot, but they never enjoyed the popularity of his swashbucklers, mostly because the scripts were never as good. This feels like a quickie they threw him as thanks for The Sea Hawk - a B film with an A star.It has a bright central idea - Errol is a businessman who moonlights as a popular mystery writer and becomes involved in a real mystery - but spends far too long in second gear. For instance, the main thing prompting his investigation is curiousity (why not be motivated, say, by something to do with his alter ego? Say his alter ego is accused of the crime or something?) And the scenes where Errol pretends (not very convincingly) to be a Texan in order to pump information out of a blousy blonde singer (Lee Patrick) really drag. Brenda Marshall is Errol's wife, a little less bland than in The Sea Hawk (her dopey eyes suit the character who doesn't notice her husband leading a double life) but you wish she'd had more spark.
Occasionally the film perks into life like when Errol tries to charm his mother or banters with detective Alan Hale (if only his character had been more of a scamp), when the cops think Marshall and Errol did the crime, and the end where Errol confronts the killer. But the plot is a bit of a mess and they don't really exploit the double life thing as well as they could.
Another reason the film mightn't have done as well as Warners and Errol hoped (he starred in no more comedies til the war ended): the sight of a rich investment consultant with a butler and chauffer who does about 5 minutes work before running off to write his books might have worked in the 1930s (the heyday of The Thin Man) but probably didn't go down as well as WW2 started.
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