The murder of any journalist is bound to whip the media into a frenzy. So when ex-BBC correspondent Ed Stonax is found dead, the last thing Detective Inspector Bill Slider needs to complicate his life is the reappearance of an old enemy issuing death threats. Trevor Bates, aka The Needle, is on the loose and trying to kill him. Along with that and a high-profile murder to solve, he must try to find a spare moment to marry Joanna before their baby is born.

One calm night in Twickenham, a businessman named Tom Treadnor is shot off his barstool at The Queen Pub. Superintendent Richard Jury is called in to investigate and quickly realizes that everyone in Treadnor’s life—from his widow, Alice, to the staff at his manor, to his business partner—had differing opinions of him. And to complicate things further, Jury has just happened upon a photo in a newspaper of a man in the United States, who is a dead ringer for Treadnor.

There's a serial killer targeting the streets of Newcastle, seemingly picking his victims at random but subjecting them all to the same torturous end. When the Chief Inspector on the case goes missing, it falls on DCI Ryan to track down the man who is brutally murdering women and goading the police to 'catch me if you can'. As everyone becomes a suspect, Ryan and his team get drawn further and further into the case, but for Ryan the nightmare gets closer to home than he could ever have imagined.

When a girl’s body is found strangled, raped, and horrifically mutilated by a boat’s propeller, deep in the heart of the Norfolk Broads, newly arrived Detective Inspector John Tanner is asked to assist with the investigation. At first, all the evidence points to a man who had a multi-million-pound reason to kill her. But when an alibi is produced from an unexpected source, and another body appears at the base of a slipway, Tanner finds himself turning to local girl Detective Constable Jenny Evans for help.

Monica Noble is throwing a party to welcome the village’s new residents. Then as the drinks are flowing, a shotgun blast rings out. One of the guests is found dead. DCI Dury and Sergeant Jim Greer are soon on the scene and discover that the victim had many enemies. Almost all the guests harbor secrets and motives for murder. Even Monica’s daughter comes under suspicion. When another villager is strangled to death nearly a week later, the stakes are raised. Can Monica help the local detectives save her daughter and solve the murders before anyone else pays the ultimate price?