Grand Central Murder is a film-noir from 1942.  This movie is based on a Sue MacVeigh book and though I’ve never read it, I think this story has more in common with Sherlock Holmes then Phillip Marlowe.  Though this seems to not be a true noir in story the filming is very noir.  The opening scenes visual is one of the coolest in noir. The rest of the movie uses shadows in a very artistic way.  S. Sylvan Simon is the director and looked to me like he showed some promise in the genre but he directed 34 films and it looks like almost all of them except for this one, was comedy and family films.  To bad I would love to see his style in more dark films like this.

Our P.I. detective is played by Van Heflin and is pretty entertaining in this part.  Patricia Dane is the beautiful gold digger that is in the center of the investigation.  There is a long cast of characters that at times are a little hard to keep track of.  This movie has not been rated much in IMDb and is currently at a 6.6, with only 453 people rating it.  I caught this on Turner Classic Movies and it may be hard to find on DVD, but it is available.  It may be worth the effort to find if you are a hard-core noir fan.