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Henry Allerton (Herbert Lytton), the accountant of mobster Joel Moss
(Anthony Caruso), is shot in a phone booth at a tabacconist's, and while
he was known to have carried a coded book with his boss's criminal
contacts with him, this cannot be found on him after the murder, only a
copy of Alice in Wonderland. Somehow, private eye Michael Shayne
(Richard Denning) is drawn into the case, and before you know it, his
assistant Lucy (Patricia Donahue) is kidnapped, and the kidnapper, a
certain Rice (Al Ruscio) wants to release her only in exchange for Alice
in Wonderland, the book, which Shayne has to steal from his friend,
investigating officer Gentry (Herbert Rudley) - and as a result he
suddenly finds himself on the run from the law himself (after all he has
stolen evidence). What's worse though is that Rice breaks his appointment
with Shayne to exchange the book for Lucy, and suddenly is nowhere to be
found. Shayne tries to get a lead on Rice, but neither Moss - who doesn't
show the least bit of interest in Alice in Wonderland, which
everybody thinks to be vital evidence to blow his racket to Kingdom Come -
nor Allerton's estranged daughter (Carolyn Kearney), nor her crooked
lawyer (Wesley Lau) have the slightest idea where (or who) he could be.
Eventually, Shayne finds Rice rather by chance, but Rice's already dead,
shot, but at least Lucy can be saved. Then Shayne makes a seemingly
insignificant yet vital discovery: Alice in Wonderland was actually
intended to be a present for a little girl and had nothing to do with the
case at all, which means the codebook still has to be at the tabacconist's
- and it turns out to be a phonebook, which everybody overlooked since a
phonebook in a phonebooth is nothing suspicious, now is it? Anyways,
when retrieving the phonebook, Shayne and Gentry also manage to arrest
Moss, who also tried to get his hands on the book, at the same time. Now
there is only one thing left to uncover: Rice's police contact (he needed
to have one to know all that much about Alice in Wonderland) -
which turns out to be Gentry's very partner, Wallace (Frank Maxwell), who
is overcome and apprehended after a final shootout. While my
synopsis might sound a bit confusing (and I'm sorry about that), this
episode of Michael Shayne is actually a well-written murder
mystery with quite some original twists and turns. No masterpiece of
TV-crime drama maybe, but on a story-level, way more interesting than most
TV crime series that are on nowadays nevertheless.
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