User Reviews

This was an interesting episode with a very satisfying ending.

Longtime safe-cracker "Val Mooney" wants to disappear and sees his chance when a warehouse fire kills 34 including his wife's brother. "Hey, tell them that was me in the fire," he orders his reluctant wife. She complies. Apparently it's either that or some rough stuff. Yet, shortly thereafter we see a hardened lying woman who is cruel to the widow of the man who really died and the wife is frantic thinking her husband only is missing. Gee, the Rooney woman is looking worse than her husband-thief! When the woman tells Frank and his boss the dead body is Val, Frank is suspicious. His boss isn't but Frank always seems way ahead of the Captain. (You wonder how the guy got promoted that high?).

A few days later some safe-cracking jobs are held and Frank is getting more suspicious. "Crooks rarely change their M.O.," he says., " and the MOs become like fingerprints." This has Val Rooney's "prints" all over it.

Both Val and his wife "disappear" and it's interesting to see how Frank finds them (with a dramatic showdown which includes our hero getting bitten by the wife!

***SPOILERS*** Somewhat far out and unconvincing M Squad episode about the "Big Switch" where burned to a crisps Paul Pulaski's unidentifiable body is identified by his sister Rose, Margaret Field, as that of her safe cracking husband Val Mooney, Robert Knapp. That's done so he can go on committing break in robberies with the police not looking for him thinking that he's dead.

This incredible story started when Mooney heard on the radio of a fire in the Chicago South Side where a tool & die factory was burned to the ground with 34 people perishing including his brother in law Ralph Pulaski! Now in the clear in him being officially declared dead Mooney goes on a robbery spree leaving clues that he's in fact the culprit not at all thinking the police will put two and two together in finding out that he's, despite being declared dead, committing the crimes! It's Let. Det. Frank Ballinger, Lee Marvin, who soon realizes that Rosa was lying about her husband being dead in her still keeping his clothes pressed and laundered as well as his personal effects including his robbery tools as he in fact was still alive. Not at first going along with Ballinger his boss Capt. Grey, Paul Newlan, soon himself realizes he's been suckered into believing by Rose that her very much alive husband Val Mooney is back in action as well as committing crimes all over the city of Chicago! It's Capt. Grey who then puts a tail on Rosa that leads straight to her not so dead husband Val Mooney hideout!

****SPOILERS*** It's when Mooney was expecting a shipment of wine & booze that both Ballinger and Grey, pretending to be delivery boys, burst into his secret hideout together with a squad of the Chicago PD and the sh*t hit the fan. After almost having his ear bit off by an hysterical Rose Ballinger, after knocking her out, confronted Mooney, who's an expert in karate, who slashed his left arm with a razor that he was shaving with as he tried to make hios getaway. Using his own style of karate Ballinger put away both Mooney and his wife and saved the real and dead Ralph Pulaski's wife Mary, Patricia Huston, any more grief. That in her finding out that her loving and hard working husband Ralph didn't walk out on her as his sister Rose made her think but died on the job, in a factory fire, supporting his family.