"Detour" tells the story of Al Roberts, played by Tom Neal as a petulant loser with haunted eyes and a weak mouth, who plays piano in a nightclub and is in love, or says he is, with a singer named Sue. Their song, significantly, is "I Can't Believe You Fell in Love With Me.” He wants to get married, she leaves for the West Coast, he continues to play piano, but then: "When this drunk gave me a ten spot, I couldn't get very excited. What was it? A piece of paper crawling with germs.”

So he hitchhikes to California, getting a lift in Arizona from a man named Haskell, who tells him about a woman hitchhiker who left deep scratches on his hand: "There oughta be a law against dames with claws.” Haskell dies of a heart attack. Al buries the body, and takes Haskell's car, clothes, money and identification; he claims to have no choice, because the police will in any event assume he murdered the man.

He picks up a hitchhiker named Vera (Ann Savage), who “looked like she'd just been thrown off the crummiest freight train in the world.” She seems to doze, then sits bolt upright and makes a sudden verbal attack: “Where'd you leave his body? Where did you leave the owner of this car? Your name's not Haskell!” Al realizes he has picked up the dame with the claws.

Haskell had told them both the same unlikely story, about running away from home at 15 after putting a friend's eye out in a duel (“My dad had a couple of FrancoPrussian sabers”).

In Los Angeles, Vera reads that Haskell's rich father is dying, and dreams up a con for Al to impersonate the long-lost son and inherit the estate. Waiting for the old man to die, they sit in a rented room, drinking, playing cards and fighting, until Al finds himself with another corpse on his hands, once again in a situation that makes him look guilty of murder.

Roberts is played by Tom Neal as a sad sack who seems relieved to surrender to Vera (“My favorite sport is being kept prisoner”). Ann Savage plays Vera as a venomous castrator. Every line is acid and angry; in an era before four-letter words, she lashes Al with “sucker” and “sap.” Of course Al could simply escape from her. Sure, she has the key to the room, but any woman who kills a bottle of booze in a night can be dodged fairly easily. Al stays because he wants to stay. He wallows in mistreatment.

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