Shoestring

Private detective Eddie Shoestring is asked by Radio West to look into the life of Sarah Marshall, a prostitute who has committed suicide. She died in a Rolls Royce belonging to David Carn, the station's most popular disc jockey, immediately after she had desperately tried to see him, and Radio West wants Eddie to show Sarah had no connection with their man.

Eddie nervously does his first ""Private Ear"" program and tries to locate the drivers of a van who are responsible for killing a young woman's husband in a car accident.

Eddie goes to work for Jean, the wife of Major Hansford, a tough prep school headmaster (and retired Army officer) whose small school is being threatened by a series of nasty pranks.

Marion Cutler, a social worker, asks Eddie to look for Nick Forrest, one of her charges who has gone missing. Nick is a remarkable fellow who had been living in a hut on the beach. But Steve, the owner of the hut, tells Eddie he's never heard of him. The mystery begins to centre on some aerial photographs of the coast-line taken by Nick, and Eddie soon finds he is onto a dangerous gang of drug-smugglers.

The wife of a convict threatens to throw herself off the roof of the Radio West building unless Eddie investigates her claim of a miscarriage of justice. Her husband was jailed for killing a shop assistant while robbing a local jeweller's shop - but did he do it?

A distraught woman asks Eddie to find her daughter, who she is sure has been kidnapped by her ex-husband.

A 76-year-old woman asks Eddie to look into something she saw through the window of the empty house across the street that she believes to be murder.

Don sees a man stealing a handbag from a woman's car, and when he asks Eddie to return the empty bag to its owner, the Radio West 'private ear' hears a nasty tale of blackmail.

Eddie finds himself on the edge of another breakdown when a caller taunts him with several muggings and an attack on Sonia, daring the ""Private Ear"" to catch him.

Satchley asks Eddie to find a long-forgotten rock star whose records have found new popularity on Radio West's nostalgia program.

Rosemary Mortimer, the wife of a water cress farmer, has disappeared for the second time, and her husband David is being persecuted by villagers who believe he has killed her. Don wants Eddie to raise the profile of his radio show, and Eddie offers to help Mortimer find what has happened to Rosemary.

At the request of a bereaved wife, Eddie investigates when Tim Reynolds jumps to his death from the top of a building in the city centre. Reynolds was developing a new fuel-efficiency computer system and was also in debt, and two shady business men, Rodgers and Parry, are somehow mixed up in a dishonest computer deal.