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DI Robert Lewis teams up with DS James Hathaway to look into the murder of an Oxford mathematics student.

DI Lewis returns to Oxford after several years absence and is reluctantly assigned by his new boss, DCS Innocent, to the murder of an Oxford mathematics student who was shot while participating in a sleep study. The key-code used to access the sleep lab was assigned to a fellow maths student, Daniel Griffin, but Daniel's math tutor has provided him with an alibi. Daniel is a maladjusted young man who will soon inherit his father's automotive empire. He is disruptive and has no respect for his uncle who now heads the company. The future of the company however rests on an impending deal with Japanese investors who insist that family unity is all important at this time. When two other murder occurs, Lewis must decipher a cryptic clue left in an old case file by his former boss, Chief Inspector Morse .
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DI Lewis and DS Hathaway investigate the murder of Dean Greely. As the investigation continues, they discover that Greely and three other men had formed a club during their Oxford student days, the Sons of the Twice Born. Today, the men have little contact with one another and initially deny that their club existed. When a second member of the foursome is murdered, it becomes apparent the they have a secret, one from 30 years ago and that someone is out for revenge.
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DI Lewis is less than pleased when he and DS Hathaway are assigned to protect Nicky Turnbull, a former criminal turned successful author. Turnbull had actually cheated two Oxford colleges in his computer scam and had received death threats. Turnbull is everything Lewis dislikes but he grits his teeth does the job. Turnbull is in Oxford to make a speech at the request of the Students Union but things take a serious turn when Jo Gilchrist, a student and a member of Turnbull's reception committee, is found strangled. Gilchrist wrote for a student newspaper and was about to expose a professor's exam scam. When Turnbull is shot in the courtyard of his hotel, Lewis realizes that the man's wife was his first girlfriend. He also learns that they were on the verge of getting a divorce.
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In spite of Chief Superintendent Innocent's orders to the contrary, DI Lewis continues to investigate the supposed suicide of housewife Rachel Mallory. Regardless of the replacement coroner's findings, Lewis simply cannot find a single reason why the attractive woman would take her own life. She was married to a successful optometrist, Hugh Mallory, had two lovely children and a good circle of friends. As Lewis and Hathaway dig deeper into the case they obtain two important pieces of information. The first is that Hugh and Rachel weren't married but actually part of a wife swap that occurred some years before with Hugh's business partner. The second comes from a eccentric Oxford professor who promises the police an important piece of information in return for a favor.
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DI Lewis and DS Hathaway investigate two murders that are in some way connected. In the first, Reg Chapman, is found in the labyrinthine bowels of Oxford University's Bodlean library having been shot. He worked at the library and was an engineer by profession but had lost his regular job. He also lost his house and soon was to lose his wife over his gambling addiction. The second murder is that of Nell Buckley, a second year art student. A free spirit whom Lewis had actually met a few days before she too is found, bludgeoned to death near near a river bank. As they investigate, the police find that gambling, original works by the poet Shelley and a gifted autistic artist all factor into solving a complex crime.
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DI Lewis and DS Hathaway investigate the murder of of a German history lecturer from the University, R.G. Cole, who is strangled at a friend's house. He and Richard Helm had been out drinking and had gone to Helm's house when they were thrown out of a local club for drunkenness. When Helm returns from a quick to the off-license, he finds the lecturer dead. The forensic evidence points the police in the direction of the University Boxing Club as well as to the owners of the club that had thrown out Cole and Helm. At the latter, Lewis meets the soon to be divorced owner Ann Kriel who definitely shows an interest in him. The solution to the crime lies in the discovery of a bare-knuckle fighting club as well ad the identity of a one-time East German informant whose reporting to the State Police, the Stasi, led to the death of a prominent professor of Wagnerian music. A death in which, Lewis learns, his old boss and mentor DCI Morse inadvertently played a part.
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Lady Hugh, the intolerant Bible-fanatic president of Oxford's Mayfield college, turns against anything gay. Shortly after popular, decent student Will McEwan shoots himself in the head in St. Mark's church, after waving the revolver at Reverend Francis King, who is himself found tortuously murdered by a hot poker in the head the next day. The link between both victims is The Garden, a pious society offering 'Christian answers to youngsters' contemporary questions', its emblem being a Phoenix, which both Will's suicide note 'I lost my way between Gethsemane and Calvary' and a message on King's door 'Life born of fire' refer to. Lewis's partner, Detective Sergeant James Hathaway, was a friend of gentle gay Will in school and again at university, but his brutally gay-bashing father Henry McEwan apparently repudiates Will posthumously finding out and his mother believed he was getting steady with a nice girl. Lewis keeps digging in all those circles, discovering more secrets and deceit. More blood is to be spilled, and the meaning of names proves crucial...
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Inspector Lewis and DS Hathaway investigate the rape of Beatrice Donnelly who was drugged while at a party. She was duped into thinking her father had left champagne for her but he had nothing to do with. It does mean the perpetrator knew them however. When Hathaway let's it slip to the girl's father that they are investigating Oswald Cooper, an IT technician at his daughter's school, Cooper is soon after found garroted and emasculated. Lewis finds himself investigating several prominent members of Oxford society and is admonished by Superintendent Innocent not to engage in chippy copper antics, as she calls it. It becomes apparent that 3 of Cooper's old school chums from long ago - all of whom have achieved a level of success that passed Cooper by - could have had a motive. Only one of them however is hiding a dark secret.
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DI Lewis and DS Hathaway investigate the death of Marina Hartner, an attractive young woman from the Czech Republic who was killed when someone broke a mirror over her head, slicing open her jugular. Lewis doubts it was a random attack and the victim left the name of what appears to be an Iraqi town written in her own blood. The mirror was taken from the office of Professor Hamid Jassim, who reports theft the following morning. She worked in a pub but was brought to the UK by an Oxford professor, Norman Deering and was having a sexual relationship with him and others. Lewis soon realizes however that he's made an incorrect assumption that changes the nature of the case entirely.
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DI Lewis and DS Hathaway investigate the murder of an Oxford student, Robert Scott, an amateur thespian who on the day of the official previews of their play, The Merchant of Venice, is found stabbed in the heart. The police find a somewhat eclectic group with few shedding any tears over Scott's death. Several in the group, including a graduate who is now working as a journalist, are fiercely ambitious and were counting on the play to establish their reputations. The police also learn that Scott was a womanizer and perhaps a thief, having been accused by his fellows of stealing from them at the Edinburgh Festival the previous year. When a second murder takes place, Lewis realizes there has to be something other the petty thefts and jealousies behind it all. In another investigation, they arrest a minor and ineffective con man, Simon Monkford, who Hathaway learns was involved in a crime in which Lewis would have a great personal interest.
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DI Lewis and DS Hathaway investigate the murder of Steven Mullan, who was forcibly pushed into a very hot bath. Mullan had been convicted a few years earlier of drinking and driving, resulting in a serious accident and a prison sentence. Mullan was out to kill Tom Rattenbury, a well-known and published atheist but it was his daughter Jessica at the wheel and as a result of her injuries is now bound to wheelchair. Her parents claim to have put it all behind them and her brother Daniel claims to have been with his girlfriend Hope Ransome, an American student who happens to be the daughter of the US Secretary of State. When it turns out that Mullan and his roommate, Alex Hadley, swapped identities the investigation is quickly back to square one. The investigation reveals the real Alex Hadley was having an affair with a married woman but a second murder and a suicide only adds to the confusion.
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Thirty-five years after she supposedly drowned herself, rock star Esme Ford returns to Oxford to secretly re-establish her band Midnight Addiction with former members Richie, Mack and Franco. The secrecy extends to the band's reaction when an orphaned teenage boy is killed outside Richie's house. Then ex-roadie Bone and Richie's daughter's music tutor, who used to write the band's sleeve-notes, are also murdered. Midnight Addiction may well once have been the real thing but several people are definitely not what they first seem to be.
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Dr Stephen Black is found murdered on a tour bus visiting Crevecourt Hall, where Hathaway's father was once estate manager so the sergeant knows the family. The murder weapon,a candlestick,is found in the family chapel and the priest once knew the victim,who was seen in the grounds a week earlier by Hopkiss the butler and Lord Mortmaigne's nephew Philip. Then the current estate manager dies,an apparent suicide,and Black seems to have known his wife Linda,who left him six years earlier.Whilst Lewis fears Hathaway's friendship with the family -especially daughter Scarlett,making a wealthy marriage to save family fortunes - makes him partial and gives him leave Black's colleague Frances Woodville tells Lewis that Black was after alleged buried treasure,dating from the Civil War, at Crevecourt Hall. No treasure is unearthed but dark family secrets are,relating to the actual fate of Linda and the reason for Black's death.
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Professor Andrew Crompton,an amateur astrologist, is found dead in the university observatory after visiting a priest for confession. A note-book belonging to student Jez Haydock is found by the body and Jez's tutor, Gwen Raeburn,is quick to go through the dead man's belongings. The widow believed her husband was having an affair and obsequious porter Roger Temple names Ella Ransome, a G.P.,as the other woman - and then she too is killed. Roger proves to be a manipulator though not a murderer but his father knows the identity of the killer. He's a retired porter,now in a home where he is regarded as senile and deluded but Lewis needs him to get to the truth.
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Six couples arrive at out of term Chaucer College for a quiz weekend with a five grand prize. One of the contestants,womanizing know-all Ethan Croft,is murdered and another,Robyn Strong, is an old flame of his, disappointed he failed to recognize her. Ethan was a brilliant linguist but he was sacked from the college years earlier after an affair with a student, now married to another quizzer,whilst Eve,Robyn's quiz partner, is the next victim,after she has been heard arguing with Ethan. Passion, however, is not the motive, the killer being one whose guilty secret was exposed by Ethan's language skills over a past business transaction - with at least two suspects in the frame.
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On Hallowe'en Ligiea Willard,stem-cell researcher and ex-flatmate of Laura Hobson,is killed on her way to a reunion with Laura and another old friend Ellen Jacoby.Her work attracted protests and she was about to go public on sharp practice at her institute.Psychic Ursula Van Tressell 'sensed' the killing and exorcises a house where the three women once lived at its owners' request. Next day a resident is found slain and a message on the fridge urges Find Mary Gwilliam,who is also murdered after trying to phone Laura. Mary was a nurse at a mental hospital where another of Laura's house-mates - and boyfriend - died. After an unsuccessful attempt to kill Ellen Lewis realises that Laura has not been honest with him. But is she a killer?
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At a reunion at all female college Lady Matilda's,Poppy Toynton,bossy housemate of principal Diana Ellerby,is murdered.Years earlier Lewis had visited the same college when fifteen-year old Chloe Brooks,visiting her student sister Ruth,had been attacked,supposably by Ruth's American boyfriend Jud Havelock,who disappeared. Chloe went into a coma from which she has only recently recovered but has little recall of that night's events. Lewis visits Ali McLennan,a retired colleague who worked on the Havelock case but she has no leads for him. Then she too is murdered and Lewis discovers that she was blackmailing Poppy for killing Jud. Poppy was also responsible for a hate campaign against several of her former student contemporaries,whose lives suffered as a result. Most of them were present on the night of Jud's disappearance,which Hathaway,tracking down the costumes for the party for that night and using Poppy's video evidence,reconstructs,nailing the killer and their motives.
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Student Amy Katz is murdered whilst taking part in a clinical trial for anti-depressant drugs,overseen by Dr. Alex Gansa,her psychiatrist following her soldier brother's death in Afghanistan. Amy captivated the other young male volunteers,including love-lorn Adam Douglas and Jack Collins - to the intense hatred of Jack's girlfriend Karen - but Amy was in love with the married Gansa. When Adam kills himself with an over-dose of trial pills stolen and sold to him by Karen and Jack, Gansa is discredited and the experiment halted. It seems Amy knew but kept quiet to protect him. Then Gansa's wife is put in a coma by a hit-and-run driver as she is about to give Lewis information and Gansa's loyal assistant Bethan is also attacked. Bethan claims Gansa is trying to claim she is mentally ill to pin the murders on her. Gansa says she is definitely mentally ill,infatuated with him and the killer. Which,if either of them,is right?
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Whilst digging in the woods botanist Liv Nash unearths the corpse of academic Murray Hawes,a man seemingly obsessed with solving the riddle of the Snark in the Lewis Carroll poem. Just before his death he had spent two hundred thousand pounds on an original copy of the poem which he felt held the key and was financing himself as a medical guinea pig to Dr Alex Falconer. Forensics show that he was killed in the Oxford Botanic Gardens and carried to the woods and amateur sleuth Michelle Marber places Falconer in the gardens at the time though he confesses to an affair with their curator,Liv's boss Helena Wright. Michelle tells Lewis she feels that Falconer and Murray's brother Conor were responsible for the death of her son Stevie. Conor founded a club for genius students and hounded Stevie to join but now Conor is the next victim after arguing with two new prospective candidates. Lewis finds that sibling rivalry,the quest for medical cures and extra-marital affairs all play a part in solving the brothers' murders.
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When lonely feminist lecturer Mirnda Thornton is found dead after a video she submitted to a dating agency is viciously made public on a scurrilous website,the first conclusion is suicide. But,with her answer phone removed and finger prints wiped,foul play is suspected. Miranda opposed property developer David Connelly buying land belonging to her college and had been visited,via the website by unhappily married journalist Francis Mitchell,though he states that Miranda was dead when he visited her. Embittered ex-student Sebastian Dromgoole admits to posting the video but Hathaway is guilt-ridden after Dromgoole's girlfriend,whom he had asked to find out more information,is killed. Having found themselves on the website Lewis and Hathaway find that,contrary to claims,their principal suspects have known each other for two decades.
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Nick and Holly Addams return home to find their baby-sitter,Jess Lake,murdered. She was tied to a bed and indeed often posed for bondage and fetish shots for photographer Marion Hammond. She also worked in a university lab with her boyfriend Gideon's father Dr. Massey,who is divorced from his unfeeling wife Stanza. Holly admits that Nick does not have an alibi but he seems to have no link to the next victim,Jess's housemate Silas,whose corpse is also arranged in the style of one of Marion's photos. Lewis finds himself tracking a killer who is a seemingly respectable citizen but who has a split personality rendering them an obsessive.
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American academic Paul Yelland faces accusations of racism when he presents his theory on Criminal Dangerousness to an Oxford college and is later found murdered. Married professors Anne and Robert Fraser claim they invited him to raise their department's profile and Robert,who is having an affair with student Nina, points Lewis towards Myra Bennett's anti-fascist group. Yelland also dealt in antiques and had angered two clients with a forgery and furthermore turned out to be the father of a staff member,whose mother he deserted when pregnant. Then Nina is killed after Anne has discovered the affair. Lewis must not only expose a killer whose motive goes back many years but battle with tooth-ache in the light of his fear of dentists.
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After young psychic Randolph James is murdered he is exposed as a fraud,a psychology research fellow called Reuben Beatty,who leaves a young wife Polly and baby - as well as a healthier bank balance than expected. Reuben's colleague Vicki Walmsley tells Lewis Reuben pretended to be a psychic to gather research and their boss,Professor Andrew Clare,endorses this. However Vicki also says that Clare wanted Reuben to use a truth drug he was developing for a project involving the armed forces. Investigations lead to a bereaved couple,the Dhuttas,who believe in euthanasia and Justine Skinner,a psychic who visited Reuben and saw he was a fraud. She tells the police she senses danger,involving one Frank McLean,but he too turns out to be a psychic who exposed Reuben online. Then Vicki is killed.
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As Hathaway questions Clare over Vicki's allegation that he wanted to involve Reuben in military trials - which he denies - Lewis discovers that the victims were killed with equine drugs stolen from a stable where Justine Skinner worked. On arriving at Justine's house the police find she has been beaten up by Frank McLean,who claims that she tried to frame him for Reuben's murder. Lewis also discovers that Polly's mother Jane had visited Reuben on the day of his slaying. Jane admits this,saying that she thought Reuben was being unfaithful and she wanted to buy him off but says that she left him alive. Ultimately Lewis comes to see that the killer was nothing to do with the psychic world but was involved in the murdered pair's sleep deprivation interviews.
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With Hathaway on leave Lewis has eager D.C. Gray to assist as he investigates the discovery of the corpse of an elderly man in a field.The body was stolen from Millers'undertakers and another cremated in its place. At the same time Lewis is concerned that a colleague,Jack Cornish,has left his family for an affair with Tara Faulkner,whose husband Peter owns Millers. Tara's brother,Dr Whitby,who confirmed the death of the elderly man as caused by cancer,is found dead,made to look like suicide. He and his partner,lecturer Emma Barnes,had been dinner guests at the Faulkners,along with Jack Cornish and Brian Miller and his wife where Jay,Emma's student who sometimes worked at the funeral parlour,had been a waiter. Jay was also the last person to see Dr Whitby alive. Cornish disappears but he has not run away with Tara,who is shocked by her brother's death. Jay is anxious to tell Lewis something but is discovered at the undertakers close to death,having been attacked.
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As a result of a staff shortage, DI Lewis returns to the force temporarily. Newly promoted DI James Hathaway and DS Lizzie Maddox investigate a case of arson on a private hunting ground owned by Tom Marsten and neurosurgeon Alistair Stokes. They had purchased the grounds from Gillian Fernsby who still lives there in a small house. She is only one of several suspects however when Stokes is subsequently found shot. Junior surgeon Simon Eastwood had a difficult relationship with Stokes after he complained that Stokes had consumed alcohol before he performed an operation on Rizwan Nooran leaving the lad a vegetable. It's rumored that Eastwood may have been having an affair with Stokes' wife Erica. Nooran's parents now care for him. Both Marsten and Stokes had also been receiving threats from animal rights activists. Marsten is arrested after the police learn he had recently increased the partners' life insurance and ballistics confirms it was Marsten's rifle that fired the fatal bullet. ...
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After falling ill during interrogation, Marston is taken to hospital but escapes and is hiding somewhere on his 400 acre hunting ground. When he is found dead however ballistics insists that the murder weapon was the same as that used to shoot Stokes - only that rifle has been in police custody for the last 48 hours. Hathaway realizes that the recent break in at a public swimming pool may have been part of the plot to put someone else in the frame. When one of suspects commits suicide, the body is moved an attempt to make it look like a murder, which leads the police to the killer.
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Lewis joins DI Hathaway and DS Lizzie Maddox in investigating the death of a 23 year-old Oxford classics student, Rose Anderson. She is found in the river after having gone out for a run the previous evening and Dr. Hobson determines that she died from stab wounds. They learn from her flatmate Chloe that Rose had an argument with her boyfriend, astrophysics professor Felix Garwood, and it appears she tried to run him down with her car earlier in the day. Rose was completing her PhD at St. Sebastian College where classics professor Simon Flaxmore is an expert on her chosen subject, Euripides, having found and translated an unknown play by Euripides some years before. Her thesis supervisor Philippa Garwood knew her quite well as Rose was also tutoring her 12 year-old niece. Phillipa also happens to be Felix Garwood's wife. Philippa's sister Jan and her optometrist husband Paul hired her as a tutor as their daughter suffers from a genetic blood disorder and was frequently out of school. ...
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Dr. Hobson determines that Felix Garwood died as a result of blunt force trauma, the result of a frenzied attack. The instrument used to kill him - a telescope - has been wiped clean. DI Hathaway focuses on Rose Anderson's academic interest and learns that she found a major error in Simon Flaxmore's study of the lost play by Euripides. Flaxmore has an alibi for the time of Rose's murder and admits to having seen Felix the day he was killed but insists he was alive when he left him. They find that Flaxmore has been leading as double life but with several other suspects still in the mix, the solution isn't at all clear. A third death only adds to their confusion. The type of alcohol wipes use to clean up at Felix Garwood's murder is the vital clue to identifying the killer.
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Lewis' reputation is on the line when one of his old cases,from 2001, is reopened after it's revealed there was cross-contamination of the DNA evidence. Graham Lawrie was convicted of killing three policeman with a hammer but has consistently protested his innocence in the 13 years he's been in custody. Now the lab that conducted the forensic tests has been found at fault in two other cases. To make matters worse, a uniformed has now been killed in a similar manner. Lewis is convinced that Lawrie is a psychopath and the most recent death was either a copycat killing or the work of an accomplice. Hathaway is the senior investigating officer and keeps an open mind realizing the possibility of a wrongful conviction as well. To complicate things, it appears Lawrie had an alibi for the murder of one of the policemen in 2001 but the police report was never presented. Just as Lawrie is set free by the appeals court, another officer is struck down.
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DS Lizzie Maddox is in hospital recovering from her wounds and Lewis is blaming himself for what's happened. There are several possible suspects: journalist Hugo Blayne, who was writing a biography on Lawrie and provided him with a cellphone on a prison visit; Pamela Carson, who is obviously attracted to Lawrie; Brandon Ward, a philosophy lecturer; Luke Burgess, one of Ward's students who has an interest in the case; Douglas Wilkins, an attendant at the psychiatric prison; and Lawrie's solicitor, Katherine Warwick, who is involved with Blayne. Lawrie's psychiatrist is upset that Lawrie has been set free confirming to Lewis that he is a dangerous man. Several of the suspects are caught in lies but an unexpected death and the revelation that one of the suspects knew Lawrie long before the 2001 murders leads them to the solution.
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Whilst Hathaway visits his father, who suffers from dementia, in a home Lewis is called in when a three year old corpse is fished from a well. Then artist Talika Desai is found murdered and her necklace missing. Her agent Sean Wilkinson is a suspect after young student Ollie Tedman saw the pair argue but Ollie's father Ian, Talika's old tutor, was also giving her money. Hathaway identifies the corpse in the well as Indrek, an Eastern European immigrant but it is Lewis who inadvertently sees the man's murder on video.
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When College Dean Phil Beskin is found bludgeoned to death with a rock in local woodland, Lewis and Hathaway are called in to investigate.
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As Jay Fennell becomes the third victim, with the same alchemic inscription beside his body Hathaway works out that the victims have all performed the same esoteric quasi-Christian ritual, which is supposed to bring forgiveness. However the key to the mystery is provided by a road death, ruled as accidental, from eight years earlier. At the same time Hathaway achieves a kind of closure with his father.
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Maths professor Adam Capstone is killed by a parcel bomb. Whilst his brother David, with whom he fell out over money, points the police to threatening letters Adam received his wife Elizabeth admits that he was a philanderer and Frank Guitteau claims that Adam raped his student daughter Paula, who committed suicide after he was acquitted. Sarah Alderwood, carer for Elizabeth's invalid father Donald had a child by Adam and student Kate McMurdock accused him of plagiarizing her work. All are suspects. Then David receives a parcel bomb and Lewis and Hathaway are with him when it explodes.
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Nobody is killed in the explosion but Lewis notes that Kate's boyfriend Djimon was outside the building at the time and Lewis wonders if David, not Adam, was the original intended victim as, despite his denial, he knew Paula well. David's colleague Andrew Dimmock admits that the pair of them scammed casinos together before he too is killed. A case of stolen identity clears one suspect while Lewis and Hathaway separately work out who is the murderer and Lewis can fly off to New Zealand with Dr Hobson.
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