Jigsaw

A woman's body is found in a house on the coast near Brighton. No identity, no witness, not a single lead. Detective Inspector Fred Fellows and his sergeant Jim Wilks start from the very beginning: who owns the house, who paid the rent, where the furniture came from. The investigation goes forward step by patient step. Val Guest adapted the film from a novel by Hillary Waugh, drawing on a real murder case in Brighton in the thirties. The usual excitement of the genre is absent; in its place is actual police work: receipts, telephone calls, going from shop to shop. It is one of the coolest-headed examples of British noir. The streets of Brighton and Hove are used as real locations and give the film a documentary texture.