Joe Velasco is awarded parole for good behavior, promising to live life as a reformed man and avoid the underworld activities which landed him in jail. But almost immediately following his release, a series of occurrences begin to steer him back towards the road to ruin.
Upon waking up to the news that the man she’d gone on a date with the previous night has been murdered, a young woman with only a faint memory of the night’s events begins to suspect that she murdered him while attempting to resist his advances.
Private eye Phillip Marlowe wants to get out of the detective racket and into crime writing. But when he's called to the office of editor Adrienne Fromsett, it's not to talk about his story ideas — she wants him to locate the missing wife of her boss, Mr. Kingsby. The assignment quickly becomes complicated when bodies start turning up.