'Toon star Roger is worried that his wife Jessica is playing pattycake with someone else, so the studio hires detective Eddie Valiant to snoop on her. But the stakes are quickly raised when Marvin Acme is found dead and Roger is the prime suspect.
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.
After policeman Frank Dooley is framed for theft and loses his job on the force, he joins a security guard agency and teams up with inept former defense lawyer Norman Kane. When the two botch a job guarding a local warehouse, they begin to uncover corruption within the company and their union.
Lemmy Caution is on a mission to eliminate Professor Von Braun, the creator of a malevolent computer that rules the city of Alphaville. Befriended by the scientist’s daughter Natasha, Lemmy must unravel the mysteries of the strictly logical Alpha 60 and teach Natasha the meaning of the word “love.”
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.
Newspaper reporter Tim Rourke keeps writing articles that attack the police department for its failure to solve a chain of murders, which nearly leads to the reporter's death. He calls in private detective Michael Shayne, who turns up a blonde and a blackmailer.
The discovery of a corpse and the ensuing probe by an idealistic journalist threatens to unravel a bumbling local politician's campaign for governor of Colorado.
One evening, Hammer gives a ride to Christina, an attractive hitchhiker on a lonely country road, who has escaped from the nearby lunatic asylum. Thugs waylay them and force his car to crash. When Hammer returns to semi-consciousness, he hears Christina being tortured until she dies. Hammer, both for vengeance and in hopes that "something big" is behind it all, decides to pursue the case.
Inept private investigator Harry Dobbs meets vampish new client Miss Dolan, who wants him to follow her abusive lover. But Dobbs sets about tailing a different person entirely – a mysterious character leading a double life. Harry, however, discovers that he himself is being followed by a distaff gumshoe.
Private detective and former football player Harry Moseby gets hired on to what seems a standard missing person case - a former Hollywood actress wants Moseby to find and return her daughter. Harry travels to Florida to find her, but he begins to see a connection between the runaway girl, the world of Hollywood stuntmen, and a suspicious mechanic when an unsolved murder comes to light.
Harper is brought to Louisiana to investigate an attempted blackmail scheme. He soon finds out that it involves an old flame of his and her daughter. He eventually finds himself caught in a power struggle between the matriarch of the family and a greedy oil baron, who wants their property. Poor Harper! Things are not as straight-forward as they initially appeared.
Real estate developer Jake Berman hires private investigator and war veteran Jake Gittes for some run-of-the-mill matrimonial work. After Berman shoots his wife's lover, who happens to be his business partner, Gittes is drawn into a web of conspiracy and deceit involving the oil reserves beneath Los Angeles. While investigating, Gittes hears a voice from his past that causes him to revisit a traumatic case in Chinatown.
A young, beautiful and rich girl, Dimpy Singh, approaches Samrat Tilakdhari, a private investigator, with a strange case. Their garden got ruined for reasons that appear natural but are not known; leading horticulturists have examined the fading plants but they have not been able to identify the probable reason. Further, her father's favorite horse died; once again the reason for the pre-mature death remains a mystery. That's not the end; Dimpy's father Mahendra Pratap Singh, otherwise a very strong and balanced man, has been experiencing deteriorating health. All these aspects when combined makes the case sound weird and that grabs the attention of Samrat. Samrat along with his assistant friend, Chakradhar Pandey, visits the huge estate of Mahendra Pratap Singh. As he starts investigating, he discovers lots of mysterious facts.
In the late 1950s, British police officer Tony Aaron resigns from the force after sleeping with Hazel, wife of the man whose house he was supposed to guard. In his new job as a fake private investigator, he helps couples get divorces by photographing Hazel having "affairs" with the husband. When she is murdered during a job, Tony begins having an affair with the dead man's mistress, Angeline, while trying to prove his innocence.
A detective investigating kidnapping case discovers the victim, who may be a zombie.
Victoria "V.I" Warshawski is a Chicago based private detective who agrees to babysit for her new boyfriend; then he is murdered. Being the detective type, she makes the murder her next case. In doing so she befriends the victim's daughter, Kat, and together they set out to crack the case.
Private detective Dirk Trent, a collector of cigarette butts, a "smooth" ladies man, a wearer of bad suits, and he's convinced there's more to an incident he caught on tape, where a man seemed about to murder his mistress with an axe. Delving deeper, the film enters some seldom-trodden territory as it slips easily into horror and sci-fi, while still maintaining the hilarious dialogue
A seemingly good Samaritan hires a private detective to prove a teen sitting in prison on a murder charge is innocent. His investigation discovers deep corruption in a Connecticut town and finds the woman isn't everything she is pretending to be either.