Antonio Gomez is a nearly destitute musician and widower with an 11-year-old boy named Paco in Mexico City. Trying to support Paco in the face of unemployment and neighbors who want custody of his son, Gomez argues with an ex-girlfriend over money that she owes him. His girlfriend is murdered by the religious fanatic serial killer terrorizing the city, who stabs his young female victims and leaves them with their arms folded. When neighbors report an argument that Gomez had with the murdered girl, the police presume that they are finally on the trail of the serial killer, and Gomez is their target.
At a pawn shop, Gomez meets Maria Ibinia, who accompanies him in the search for Paco. Gomez does not realize that a police dragnet is targeting him and that Paco witnessed this most recent murder and has been trailing the killer, but the killer spots Paco and kidnaps him. Paco is forced to accompany the killer over the course of a night while the killer asks God whom he should murder next.
Antonio and Maria learn what has happened to Paco, and, with the help of the police, attempt to locate Paco and his kidnapper before the killer commits another knife murder.
In his syndicated column, Jimmie Fidler wrote: "[I]ts suspense moments are among the most gripping I have seen in a long series of reviews. Death hovers near our principals as a vital part of the plot, not dragged in for thrills. ... I do not hesitate to say that both youngsters and adults will shudder along through this one."[2]
Critic Dorothy Masters of the New York Daily News wrote: "An extraordinarily suspenseful story by Georges Simenon loses some of its electric charge in the conductive apparatus set up in Mexico for bridging book and screen."[3]
Jean Yothers of the Orlando Sentinel called A Life in the Balance "a nail-biting, edge-of-the-seat type picture"[4] and Herb Rau of The Miami News called the film "a real interest-building police yarn" with "one of the best chase scenes in months."[5]
