After spending two years in prison, framed for accepting a bribe, former newspaper reporter Harry Barber is released, bitter and disillusioned. Feeling like he were owed something for his loss of time, he proceeds to get himself involved in a simple kidnapping plot which turns out to be more complex than he imagined.
While watching from her train window, Nikki Collins witnesses a murder in a nearby building. When she alerts the police, they think she has read one too many mystery novels. She then enlists a popular mystery writer to help her solve the crime on her own, but her sleuthing attracts the attentions of suitors and killers.
An old man and his sister are concealing a terrible secret from their adopted teen daughter, concerning a hidden abandoned farmhouse, located deep in the woods.
In the midst of an attempt to take over his company, a powerhouse executive is hit with a huge ransom demand when his chauffeur's son is kidnapped by mistake.
A horror writer starts to model his stories off of real life and he's not prepared for what follows.
Sadistic killer-for-hire Philip Raven becomes enraged when his latest job is paid off in marked bills. Vowing to track down his double-crossing boss, nightclub executive Gates, Raven sits beside Gates' lovely new employee, Ellen, on a train out of town. Although Ellen is engaged to marry the police lieutenant who's hunting down Raven, she decides to try and set the misguided hit man straight as he hides from the cops and plots his revenge.
Soon after a veteran returns from war, his cheating wife is found dead. He evades police in an attempt to find the real murderer.
Mary Henry ends up the sole survivor of a fatal car accident through mysterious circumstances. Trying to put the incident behind her, she moves to Utah and takes a job as a church organist. But her fresh start is interrupted by visions of a fiendish man. As the visions begin to occur more frequently, Mary finds herself drawn to the deserted carnival on the outskirts of town. The strangely alluring carnival may hold the secret to her tragic past.
A writer finds an ancient evil book and suffers the consequences for it.
A con man tries to blackmail a Mexican gangster.
When a kindly priest is murdered while waiting at a street corner in a quiet Connecticut town, the citizens are horrified and demand action from the police. All of the witnesses identify John Waldron, a nervous out-of-towner, as the killer. District Attorney Henry Harvey is then put on the case and faces political opposition in his attempt to prove Waldron's innocence.
Frank Bigelow is about to die, and he knows it. The accountant has been poisoned and has only 24 hours before the lethal concoction kills him. Determined to find out who his murderer is, Frank, with the help of his assistant and girlfriend, Paula, begins to trace back over his last steps. As he frantically tries to unravel the mystery behind his own impending demise, his sleuthing leads him to a group of crooked businessmen and another murder.
A falsely convicted man's wife, Catherine, and an alcoholic composer and pianist, Martin team up in an attempt to clear her husband of the murder of a blonde singer, who is Martin's wife.
War heroes Rip Murdock and Johnny Drake are sent to Washington, D.C, to receive top honors for their service. Johnny, seemingly terrified by the publicity that awaits him, jumps off the train and later turns up dead. Suspecting foul play, Rip begins digging into his pal's past. He encounters cover-ups, threats to his own life and deadly femme fatale Coral Chandler.
After a former model is drowned in her bathtub, Detective James Halloran and Lieutenant Dan Muldoon attempt to piece together her murder.
George Taylor returns from WWII with amnesia. Back home in Los Angeles, he tries to track down his old identity, stumbling into a 3-year old murder case and a hunt for a missing $2 million.
A screenwriter with a violent temper is a murder suspect until his lovely neighbor clears him. However, she soon starts to have her doubts.
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.
A crooked politician finds himself being accused of murder by a gangster from whom he refused help during a re-election campaign.
An upper-crust family dinner is interrupted by a police inspector who brings news that a girl known to everyone present has died in suspicious circumstances. It seems that any or all of them could have had a hand in her death. But who is the mysterious Inspector and what can he want of them?