X Marks the Spot (1942)

When his pop is gunned down by some undesirables, PI "Eddie Delaney" (Damian O'Flynn) recruits feisty radio presenter "Linda Ward" (Helen Parrish) and local police lieutenant "Bill Decker" (Dick Purcell) to help him get to the bottom of things. What he didn't realise - nor did I, for that matter - was that there was an huge market during WWII for rubber. That meant tyres were almost literally worth their weight in greenbacks and somehow his father had got mixed up in some sort of racketeering. Jack La Rue is quite menacing as "Marty", the supposedly reformed night club owner firmly in their sights, but when he is bumped off, too - and all the clues start to point at "Eddie" the mystery deepens and quickens. This film does lack much by way of a decent script, or plot innovation - but the story doesn't hang about and it's certainly at the better end of the afternoon B-feature spectrum that flew by.