***SPOILERS*** NYC private eye Mike Hammer, Darren McGavin, travels all the way to Monteville PA to help his friend nightclub singer Barbara Gilmore's brother Robert,Peter Miller, get out of a double murder rap that he claims he was framed for. As it turned out the murder victim businessman Bushell's secretary Miss Lewis, Joan Byron, who was also gunned down positively identified Gilmore, from a photo, from her hospital bed just before she expired. Right away Hammer sees that the local D.A Jim Dayton, James Westerfield, is dirty not just in his mud smugged shoes and three day old unwashed socks but his trying to hang Gilmore as soon as possible even without a trial as if he was covering something up in both Bushel and his secretary murders.
Hammer is also a bit suspicious of the person that Gilmore claimed to be with him the evening of Bushel and his secretary murder the very pointy, in the tight bar she wares, and and petty Judy Rogers, Gloria Talbott, feeling that she's been threatened by D.A Dayton his his assistant Deputy Sheriff Ed Moran, H.M Wynant, to keep her pretty mouth shut or else! What that is the release of a petty shoplifting conviction that she was, or it was made to look like, convicted of five years ago.
****SPOILERS**** With Hammer getting closer and closer to the truth in Bushel and Miss Lewis' murder D.A Dayton and his henchman, the real murderer of the pair, Deputy Sheriff Moran start using strong-arm tactics to either shut him up or make Hammer disappear. Not knowing just how far Mike Hammer would go this all backfires on them with with Hmamer literately, after being beaten and thrown off a cliff, coming back from the dead and finally putting D.A Dayton and Deputy Sheriff Moran out of business for good.