Shoestring

by Paul Abelman

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first of only two novels based on the wonderful 1979-1980 BBC TV series Shoestring. Author Paul Ableman turns the TV episodes Private Ear & Stamp Duty into a more in depth story with plenty of background on private eye Eddie Shoestring.
The dialogue sparkles & having Shoestring tell the story in the first person works brilliantly. It's as fresh & enjoyable as when I first read it 40 years ago. Now, let's get out my Shoestring DVDs & enjoy all of those episodes again!

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

When living in Saudi Arabia, there wasn't much to choose from on television, which was on only in the evenings, and even then, interrupted by the call to prayer, "Shoestring" was one of our favorites because of the personality of the actor, whose picture is on the cover of the book, and the stories were ordinary whodunits. I finally got the book after coming back to the States and was disappointed in the quality of the stories but also I missed not being in the desert watching the stories unfold at the end of a long hot day when any type of entertainment was welcome. I do miss the grueling workday of Aramco relieved by banal television programming and looking forward to reading better fare from the Dhahran library at Aramco. The only real cool relief was the excellent library which could have been in any small town USA. (And it stayed open until 10:00 PM.)

[Soul Hudson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up because at the time I was watching a lot of repeats of the TV series. Although a well-written book, I was slightly disappointed. I think my expectations where a little high. Kept comparing the book to the TV series. I think I may have been affected by the fact the book was wrote in the eighties and felt dated. That’s just my useless modern upbringing.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essntially a novelisation of two episodes, this works well though it does try a little bit too hard. The first part (chapter 8 is the join) was obviously the pilot, an origin story that takes a while to get going and contains some poor dialogue (aping US PI stuff might be fun for a while but it wears off very quickly). A local prostitute, with links to one of Radio West’s big DJs is murdered and Shoestring is quickly caught up with Bristol gangsters as he tries to find out why. The reason, when it’s revealed, is quite poignant but the story ends without much of a resolution. The second story is slighter still, a boy-who-cried-wolf tale, involving corrupt local businessmen, bent councillors and unscrupulous board members, it does get some set pieces right, but feels a bit too brisk. My memory of the TV show is vague, so I was really coming to this on name recognition only and perhaps the years haven’t been kind. Not bad, particularly and worth a read if you want a UK private eye (and some great use of Bristol locations), but it suffers against some of the top class crime I’ve read so far this year.