Hetty Waintthropp is annoyed at the cards celebrating her sixtieth birthday--they all offer her well wishes for ""joining the club"" of senior citizens and old-age pensioners, even though she's not entitled to a pension.

Determined to make something of herself, Hetty gets a job at the local post office, where she proves her mettle quite quickly by throwing out a troublemaking biker and chasing down a shoplifter.

Hetty is called on by a pair of worried parents whose deaf-mute son, Malcolm, has disappeared while out bird-watching on the day he was to meet his mail-order bride from Thailand.

A desperate Hetty takes Geoffrey up and down the streets and sidewalks of town advertising the detective agency. This proves to be a wise method of business, as they pick up a client: a woman whose estranged son, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, has disappeared from his sheltered housing unit.

As Hetty investigates, she discovers that the woman's son, Reg, has had a hard time being accepted by society, as well as his stepfather, who turns out to have been the person who threw Reg into the streets in the first place.

As it becomes clear that Reg has gone off his medicine, Hetty finds herself in a race against the clock to try and find the man before he hurts himself or others in his delusional state.

Hetty looks into a case of bullying when her great nephew is suspended from school, after someone plants an Ecstasy tablet in his blazer.

Hetty represents a neighbour at a creditors' meeting and her agency is asked to find a missing company director and his money.