Philip Marlowe learns that Carmen Sternwood, the younger daughter of his wealthy client, killed her sister’s husband, Rusty Regan, and that her sister Vivian covered it up with the help of the gangster Eddie Mars.
Guy Haines, who was pressured into killing Charles Bruno’s father after Bruno murdered Guy’s wife, confesses to Owen Markman, his dead wife’s lover.
Philip Ashley, convinced that his cousin Rachel is poisoning him, lets her walk across a dangerous bridge he knows is unsafe, and she falls to her death.
Edna Pontellier, who has awakened to her own desires and refuses to live as a dutiful wife and mother, swims out into the Gulf of Mexico at Grand Isle until she is too tired to return.
Lily Bart, a beautiful woman who never married for money, dies from an overdose of a sleeping drug in a cheap boarding house, after paying off her debts with her small inheritance.
The Motorcycle Boy, Rusty-James’s idolized older brother, breaks into a pet store to free the Siamese fighting fish, carries them to the river and is shot dead by a police officer.
Phineas, called Finny, breaks his leg a second time after falling down the school stairs when he learns that his friend Gene shook the tree branch that caused his first fall.
Eileen Dunlop helps her glamorous new coworker Rebecca after Rebecca kidnaps the mother of a boy at the prison where they work, a mother who allowed her son to be abused.
Trevor is stabbed and killed while trying to stop a fight at school.
