The Silent Passenger


The Silent Passenger is a British black-and-white mystery film produced in 1935 at Ealing Studios, London. This was the first film outing for novelist Dorothy L. Sayers' fictional amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. It is based on an original story written by Sayers specifically for the screen. Her amateur sleuth was portrayed as a somewhat eccentric comical aristocrat who solved murders in spite of himself. As of 2014, the film is available on DVD.

Plot

A blackmailer is murdered by the husband of one of his victims, railway detective Henry Camberley, but it is the innocent John Ryder who is suspected of the murder when Camberley puts the dead body into his trunk. After making the casual acquaintance of Ryder, amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey sets about proving his friend's innocence. All these events take place while on a train trip from London to the English Channel, with Ryder acting as "bait" to flush out the real killer and solve the murder.

Cast