Morse is passed over for promotion and gets a new working partner in the shape of Lewis, who is not sure what to make of his new boss. Their first case together is a murder, when Anne Staveley, who was Morse's friend in a choral society, is found hanged in her house in the Jericho area of Oxford. The death looks like suicide, but Morse has his own reasons for treating the case as a murder investigation. A parking ticket and Oedipus the King, by Sophocles, come to his assistance.

When a serial killer is attacked and left for dead in prison, his dying confession disavows one of the murders he had previously confessed to. Morse wants to reopen the case.

An Oxford professor and fund raiser is stabbed to death at home with a weapon that is yet to be stolen from a university museum.

When the next-door neighbour of a murdered woman is also killed, Morse suspects the first shooting may have been an error.

While Morse is in hospital for a bleeding ulcer, he takes an interest in an 1859 murder and becomes convinced its resolution was a miscarriage of justice.