Due or die by Frank Kane

It's not too bad, but it's nothing interesting really. An old noir, with the usual tougher-than-everyone private investigator (Johnny Liddell) and the usual beautiful soubrette who can't resist his charm and throws herself into his arms. We follow him during his little (very little) investigation, just to hear him say, at the end, that he always suspected the guy, that he guessed there was a bomb... a mix of luck and crap, I say. Lee Loomis, the girl, is sent to convince him to accept a case. "Fat" Mike has a job for him in Las Palmas, a place described like a paradise for criminals. Johnny lets her grace and her 10.000 dollars convince him. He goes to investigate into the murder of a certain Adams, but when he gets there it turns out Mike has been murdered too. Mike's partners tell him a story: they are being blackmailed. Either they pay a million dollars or they'll be killed, and now they want to pay, but of course Johnny keeps investigating. The sheriff is deep into it and tries to stop him in lots of ways, but Johnny is stronger than his two men and smarter than him, it seems. Luckily for him, Lee and an ex-policeman who worked for Mike help him a lot. He avoids being killed or trapped, and refuses to leave town, and when he's given the suitcase that should contain the million dollars he 'guesses' it must contain a bomb instead. He doesn't board the flight to Los Angeles like the blackmailer instructed him to do; instead he buries the suitcase in the desert, thus saving all the passengers on board when the bomb explodes. He follows the sheriff first, then he has Lee help him in reuniting all the partners in one place. He, apparently, knows who is behind everything, and has known for a while, but has no proof. Luckily for him (again) in these stories people tend to confess easily. It's enough for Johnny to tell him that the sheriff will talk, and he admits everything. One of the partners, a lawyer, had killed Adams and Mike to get hold of their new, rich project. He was planning to take the money and then leave for another place where he would have been the only boss. Something like the opening of new casinos.
The guy confesses in front of all the other partners then tries to kill Johnny but fails. Johnny proposes the name of the ex-cop who helped him as the new sheriff, then leaves. It looks like he has a sort of girlfriend somewhere, but he has no problem in 'spending time' with Lee...
Not my thing.


ITA epitaffio per Johnny Liddell