An American pulp writer arrives in post-WWII Vienna only to find that the friend who waited for him is killed under mysterious circumstances. The ensuing mystery entangles him in his friend’s involvement in the black market, with the multinational police, and with his Czech girlfriend.

Bud Corliss is an ambitious college student with big plans for himself and an heiress, Dorothy Kingship. But then Dorothy goes and gets herself pregnant. It’s his child, too, of course; but this ruins everything. Her moralistic father will disown her and will certainly never accept him. It seems he’s trapped. Bud’s mother knows something is troubling her son, but he won’t talk to her about it. All she knows is that Bud doesn’t want to turn out like his father, with holes in his shoes. He doesn’t have to worry. As his mother says, when he turns his mind to something, he does it. Unknown to her, his thoughts have turned to murder.

L’ingegnere Graham e sua moglie stanno viaggiando attraverso la Turchia. Una notte subiscono un apparente attentato. Il colonnello Haki, capo della polizia segreta turca, consiglia ai due di lasciare immediatamente il paese. Sulla nave su cui sta viaggiando Graham incontra strani e misteriosi personaggi. Sfuggito a vari attentati alla sua vita, sfugge agli agenti nazisti e raggiunge la moglie. Banat, un agente nazista, vorrebbe uccidere l’ingegnere, ma Haki lo salva, lanciando il nazista giù dal cornicione del palazzo dove si sono scontrati all’ultimo sangue.

Tough L.A. private eye Mike Hammer gives a ride to Christina, a frightened young woman he finds running along the road one night. His car is run off the road by unseen thugs. Hammer is knocked out and Christina is tortured in an unsuccessful attempt to get information from her. They are put back into Hammer’s car which then is forced off a cliff. Hammer wakes up in the hospital. Velda, his trusty secretary, informs him that Christina is dead. Pat Chambers, Mike’s policeman friend, tells him to stay off the case, but Mike thinks it might be a big story—meaning big money for him—because the FBI is interested. He, Velda, and Nick, his garage mechanic friend, start investigating in hopes of finding out why Christina was killed.

“Rocky” Mulloy is framed for a murder and a holdup he didn’t commit and pulls a five year stretch in prison. He is finally pardoned when a friend returns from overseas to corroborate his testimony in court. “Rocky” then goes hunting for the real culprits so this his prison buddy, believed to be innocent, can also be pardoned. Nancy Morgan, wife of his friend, falls in love with him along the way, and he also has a few bullets fired at him by an oily character. “Rocky” finds the guilty party in a place he didn’t think about looking.

When a mobsters wife decides to testify against his evil deeds she goes undercover to avoid being killed. Now that he’s coming to trial she has to be escourted across country via train in order to testify. Cop Walter Brown and his partner are assigned the task, but the mob are on their trail.

In the ’30s, three prisoners flee from a state prison farm in Mississippi. Among them is 23-years-young Bowie, who spent the last seven years in prison and now hopes to be able to prove his innocence or retire to a home in the mountains and live in peace together with his new love, Kitty. But his criminal companions persuade him to participate in several heists, and soon the police believe him to be their leader and go after “Bowie the Kid” harder than ever.

For the last three years, Jeff Bailey has been laying low and trying to live a normal life. He’s been running his own gas station but prior to that, had been a pretty good private detective. His last job had been for a gangster, Whit Sterling, who him to find Kathy Moffat, who just happens to have shot him, and recover the $40,000 she stole. Jeff found her in Mexico but fell in love with her. She eventually ran out on him and he decided it might be better if he found a new line of work. When one of Sterling’s henchmen happens to see him pumping gas, he’s summoned to the gangster’s Lake Tahoe estate. Sterling’s offer is quite simple: recover some incriminating tax files and all will be forgotten. Jeff soon realizes however that he’s being set up and framed for murder.

Music teacher Christine Radcliffe thought Karel Novak to have been killed in the war. She loves him more than ever and insists they marry. At their reception her benefactor and former lover offers Karel the chance to solo his new cello concerto. Hollenius torments Christine and she shoots him. The concert is a success and Karel promises to stand by Christine.

A well-known judge has become a fugitive from the police, with a large reward on his head. A reporter believes that the judge is hiding in a private sanitarium, so she seeks out a private investigator and asks him to pretend to be insane, so that he can get inside the sanitarium and look for the judge. The investigator is admitted to the asylum, and encounters many dangers while trying to prove that the judge is there.