Embittered by the hit-and-run murder of his beloved wife, Gently plans to collect his pension and fade into a lonely retirement. But after learning the whereabouts of his wife's killer-the sadistic criminal mastermind Joe Webster-Gently sets off for Northumbria, bent on justice. There, his investigation leads him to murders among a motorcycle gang, and his reputation as an anticorruption crusader proves threatening to the local constabulary.

Shot down over England and billeted with a kindly farm family during the war, pilot Gunter Schmeikel returns to Northumberland to visit his former captors, now his friends. The joyous reunion turns tragic when Schmeikel's body is fished out of the harbor. Investigating the murder, Gently and Bacchus confront long-simmering anti-German sentiments among the locals and Gunter's coldly arrogant son.

Real-estate developer Cora Davidson shows up at her newly purchased property and finds the reluctant seller murdered in his backyard. Gently and Bacchus focus on the mansion's mute gardener, but they soon learn that the house has a sordid history.

Mill manager Patrick Fuller is found hanging from the rafters of his workplace. Was his death really a suicide-or murder? The investigation uncovers adultery, embezzlement, and a connection to a secret society.

Called to a crime scene at a working-class boarding house, Gently and Bacchus find a woman horribly beaten to death, her eyes covered discreetly with a handkerchief. The victim also carried her daughter's birth certificate, with the name of the child's father crossed out and "satan" penciled in. Following this lead, Gently and Bacchus probe the twisted secrets of a family that seems to harbor pure evil.

After the body of a missing teenager is found in a shallow grave, Gently and Bacchus quickly zero in on her relationship with two men: her schoolteacher and her violent, short-tempered father. The detectives enter a confusing new world of pop culture as they try to separate fact from fantasy in the young woman's life, and in the process discover others who might have had a motive to kill.

After a car turns up in a river with a drowned young woman in the passenger seat but no driver, the detectives follow the trail to the home of local aristocrats. Bacchus resents the family, and Gently suspects his sergeant may be crossing a line to get a conviction.

The murder of a black teenager has Gently and Bacchus seeking her killer in a community where racism is never far from the surface. The detectives encounter local prejudice and anti-immigrant sentiment but discover that there may have been other motivations for the crime.

The death of a coal miner 800 feet underground presents logistical problems for Gently and Bacchus. More challenging still is figuring out which of the tensions and rivalries raging above the surface is a motive for murder.

When a man is beaten to death in a Turkish bath, suspicion falls on an ex-soldier with a history of mental instability. But the mystery deepens when a psychologist who had been treating the suspect hangs himself after leaving money to the soldier in his will.