Jake and the Fatman

- Season 1

(1987)

A Senator candidate's lover is killed after she threatens to reveal their affair.

This was the pilot to the series. A man and a woman who are lovers commit a murder. Eventually it is revealed that the victim is the father and husband of the two who killed him. J.L. McCabe, the tough district attorney known as "The Fatman", suspects them right away but unfortunately has no evidence, so he sends his ace investigator, Jake Styles to get the evidence. But it won't be easy cause these two covered their tracks very well.

Jake's old partner is murdered by his fiancée, but the Fatman sees through her cover story.

A defense lawyer kills the boyfriend of his ex-wife and frames her for it.

Jake investigates an escort service after one of its girls is slain after tipping him off about its drug-smuggling operation.

A serial killer who's targeting winos taunts McCabe with phone calls before each killing.

Jake aids a beautiful undercover cop who's out to nail the criminal she blames for her father's death.

A woman whose father is a good friend of McCabe's is nearly killed by her husband. But she refuses to believe he did it. So while she recuperates in a hospital, McCabe has Jake pose as a relative who comes and stays at her house. And Jake tries to prove his complicity.

McCabe successfully prosecutes a man only to have him escape from the courtroom. As part of chase Jake is convinced a cop was in on the heist and works to prove it.

A woman who was assaulted and left blind leaves the hospital and goes home with her husband. Later the man who attacked her returns but she manages to shoot him and her husband. Jake suspects she can see and is using her blindness as a cover.

It's the holiday season, and McCabe is implored by one of his pushier assistants to take another look at a murder case.

An assassin is killed in a shootout with police shortly after arriving in L.A., so Jake takes his place to try and figure out who the dead man's target is.

A friend of Jake's is accused of killing the man who allegedly raped her, but McCabe soon comes to suspect her psychiatrist of both the rape and the murder.

A renowned television newswoman's career is jeopardized after a noted mobster is found murdered in her palatial home.

Jake tries to clear his friend, a priest accused of killing his married lover.

Jake and the Fatman discover that a wealthy publisher's death was not an accident. A $9 million dollar insurance policy leads him to the publisher's wife.

A guy who worked for a criminal offers to testify against his boss. McCabe is incredulous because he knows the man is untrustworthy and only thinks of himself. When he takes the stand he has a heart attack, at the hospital, one the criminal's men brings him some money, then kills him. McCabe later discovers he was trying to shake down his boss so that he could leave his daughter an inheritance. Later Jake finds the daughter and asks for her help to get the man who killed her father but she might working her own angle.

A supposedly kidnapped heiress (Suzanne Snyder) forms a romantic attachment to Jake (Joe Penny) to cover up her double life.

A woman who's a friend of McCabe's, has a twin sister who's a criminal. And she commits a crime and does it at the same time her sister was with McCabe. When Jake investigates and witnesses place her at the scene but because she was with McCabe, he doesn't arrest her. He tries to figure out how she does it and when he figures out about her twin sister, he arrests the twin. But at the trial, the defense dares McCabe to prove which twin was with him when the other did the crime.

A man hires a P.I. to see if his wife is having an affair. She discovers that the man is a priest. The man tells the P.I. to be quiet. But the P.I. goes to the wife and tries to shake her down. The wife then goes to the priest and says we have to come forward. She then goes to her husband and admits the affair and offers to divorce her husband and give him an equitable settlement--it seems most of the estate is hers, so he kills her. He tries to frame the priest who is a friend of Jake's. Jake naturally looks to the husband but has no proof. Jake learns of the P.I. ...

McCabe suspects that best-selling author Dennis Julian committed murder to get his hands on another writer's story.

McCabe exposes a couple's sinister plot for the husband to climb the corporate ladder by framing his competitor for murder.