The Corsican File

Remi Francois a.k.a. Jack Palmer, a hip Parisian private-eye who thinks he's as irresistible to women as he is expert at his trade, finally agrees to take on the job given him by a small-time provincial notary: to find Ange Leoni, a Corsican who has inherited a tidy sum, but who has vanished into thin air. It looks like a sinecure for Jack Palmer, who is used to infinitely more delicate missions. But as soon as he lands on the fabled "Island of Beauty" (Corsica), the sinecure turns into a nightmarish obstacle course. Watched by persons unknown through binoculars as he goes about his investigation, Palmer is stymied by the locals' unwillingness to talk, by drinking endless rounds of the local brew, by separatists who kidnap him, by policemen who manhandle him by mistake, a car that is blown to smithereens, and the mysterious Ange Leoni who makes secretive appointments with him that he never keeps. Irked and disheartened, Palmer is firmly decided to head back to the somber skies of Paris. But that's without reckoning on the determination of Police Commissioner Dargent who has been manipulating him all along from the sidelines with this phony story of a missing heir. He concocted it to exploit Palmer's talents, hoping that he'll succeed where the police have drawn a blank on the red-hot Leoni file.