The style of houseboats on the Thames really hasn't changed that much in eighty years... or else I must have been past that very same one! This film is perhaps most fascinating for its glimpses of the contemporary river and its banks (and a stripping scene where a party of young ladies scramble into their bathing suits while discarding underwear with considerable abandon!), but it's an enjoyable two-reel comedy as well. Despite the title and a few suggestions in the early set-up, it's not really a spoof detective story - more of a chase story, in which girl chases man and then both are chased by the villains, separately and together.
Walter Forde plays an enthusiastic grinning young blunderer with some charm and considerable aplomb (he even manages to raise his hat when the heroine hooks him... quite literally). There are some indifferent gags and some good ones; a well-built-up running joke about a fisherman's catch, for example. I don't think this is ever going to be a classic comedy, but it's quite entertaining and worth watching for the scenery alone.
