Dan Merrick comes out from a shattering car accident with amnesia. He finds that he is married to Judith who is trying to help him start his life again. He keeps getting flashbacks about events and places that he can't remember. He meets pet shop owner and part time private detective Gus Klein who has supposedly done some work for him prior to the accident. Klein helps Merrick to find out more...
Private Investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by wealthy General Sternwood regarding a matter involving his youngest daughter Carmen. Before the complex case is over, Marlowe sees murder, blackmail, deception, and what might be love.
A private detective takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a beautiful liar, and their quest for a priceless statuette.
Private eye Jake Gittes lives off of the murky moral climate of sunbaked, pre-World War II Southern California. Hired by a beautiful socialite to investigate her husband's extra-marital affair, Gittes is swept into a maelstrom of double dealings and deadly deceits, uncovering a web of personal and political scandals that come crashing together.
In the last days of 1999, ex-cop turned street hustler Lenny Nero receives a disc which contains the memories of the murder of a prostitute. With the help of bodyguard Mace, he starts to investigate and is pulled deeper and deeper in a whirl of murder, blackmail and intrigue.
Michael Shayne is a private detective who is disliked greatly by Pete Rafferty, local chief of police detectives. Rafferty notifies the newspaper press that he is going to close Shayne's agency, just as Michael is about to be hired by the wealthy Eleanor Ramsey, who is being blackmailed. She is the stepmother of what she considers to be two grown-up brats, Dorothy and Ernest, and she considers their father to be of little value to the world himself. They all conspire to get their hands on her money, even to the extent of attempting to hire Shayne to frame an insurance robbery. Mrs. Ramsey is murdered, and Rafferty is trying to pin the killing on Shayne, despite the fact that suspicion points to Buell Renslow, brother of the slain woman. Shayne's secretary, the fetching Phyllis Hamilton, decides to do a little detective work to help her boss.
A private detective, who has been shot, stumbles into the office of Michael Shayne (Hugh Beaumont), and dies before Shayne can question him. Shayne finds a baggage ticket in his hand. He claims it and finds the checked-bag contains the loot from a robbery. Now, he has about fifty minutes left of the running time to find the crooks, bring them to justice and return the money to the rightful owners. And needs all of it.
A husband and wife detective team takes on the search for a missing inventor and almost get killed for their efforts.
Somewhere in Los Angeles, the city of broken dreams, a stripper is murdered. Now, the private detective she had hired and her ex-footballer boyfriend are going to find her murderer... if they don't kill each other first. But the more they dig, the deeper they become enmeshed in a web of extortion, blackmail and corrupt politics hidden beneath the surface of professional football.
Dirty Harry Callahan returns for his final film adventure. Together with his partner Al Quan, he must investigate the systematic murder of actors and musicians. By the time Harry learns that the murders are a part of a sick game to predict the deaths of celebrities before they happen, it may be too late...
To the Los Angeles elite, Ford Fairlane is known as "Mr. Rock 'n' Roll Detective." This loudmouthed ladies' man serves an exclusive rock star clientele, who depend on his keen eye and smug discretion. So when a heavy-metal musician dies mid-concert, Fairlane is on the case before the lights come up. But things turn shocking when radio personality Johnny Crunch hires Fairlane to find a missing groupie mere hours before he is electrocuted live on air.
In late 1940s Los Angeles, Easy Rawlins is an unemployed black World War II veteran with few job prospects. At a bar, Easy meets DeWitt Albright, a mysterious white man looking for someone to investigate the disappearance of a missing white woman named Daphne Monet, who he suspects is hiding out in one of the city's black jazz clubs. Strapped for money and facing house payments, Easy takes the job, but soon finds himself in over his head.
A desperate socialite seeks her missing husband, troubled by bad investments and debts, with help from a private eye and the high-priced call girl hubby had been seeing.
When larcenous real estate clerk Marion Crane goes on the lam with a wad of cash and hopes of starting a new life, she ends up at the notorious Bates Motel, where manager Norman Bates cares for his housebound mother.
A down-and-out Brooklyn detective is hired to track down a singer on an odyssey that will take him through the desperate streets of Harlem, the smoke-filled jazz clubs of New Orleans, and the swamps of Louisiana and its seedy underworld of voodoo.
Juliet Forrest is convinced that the reported death of her father in a mountain car crash was no accident. Her father was a prominent cheese scientist working on a secret recipe. To prove it was murder, she enlists the services of private eye Rigby Reardon. He finds a slip of paper containing a list of people who are 'The Friends and Enemies of Carlotta'.
Danny is a young cop partnered with Nick, a seasoned but ethically tainted veteran. As the two try to stop a gang war in Chinatown, Danny relies on Nick but grows increasingly uncomfortable with the way Nick gets things done.
Nick and Nora Charles investigate when Nora's cousin reports her disreputable husband is missing, and find themselves in a mystery involving the shady owners of a popular nightclub, a singer and her dark brother, the cousin's forsaken true love, and Nora's bombastic and controlling aunt.
Hired assassin John Lee is asked by Chinatown crime boss Terence Wei to murder the young son of policeman Stan Zedkov. Lee has the boy in his sights, but his conscience gets the better of him, and he spares the child's life. Afraid that Wei will take revenge on his family in China, Lee seeks out expert forger Meg Coburn to obtain the passport he needs to get out of the country, but a band of replacement killers is soon on his trail.
Harry Crumb is a bumbling and inept private investigator who is hired to solve the kidnapping of a young heiress which he's not expected to solve because his employer is the mastermind behind the kidnapping.