Dalziel and Pascoe's investigation comes under increasing attack, despite their best efforts to search for clues. However, they battle harder than ever to uncover the truth about the mummified remains, which they believe are connected to the case of the Yorkshire chief constable's ex-wife, who vanished more than 20 years ago.

A sunburned Det. Supt Andy Dalziel returns from his holiday in Australia and finds himself immediately investigating a murder. The dead man is Declan Roach, a researcher at the local university who was found in a university laboratory clean room. The autopsy confirms that he died from nitrogen intoxication but it is not clear at first if it was accidental or not. Roach was working under the direction of Professor Fran Cunningham, who in turn has a major contract with Aphrodite, a major cosmetics firm. She is working on a formula for a rejuvenation cream that will be nothing less than a fountain of youth and there is obviously a great deal of money at stake. Andy meanwhile is thinking of packing it in and emigrating to Australia.

An ordinary housewife is poisoned with a dangerous toxin when shopping at the store, falls into a coma and dies on the same day. Dalsil and Pascoe begin an investigation. All this happens against the backdrop of a big pension scandal. Rosie comes to her father and says she doesn’t want to leave. Soon, another woman was similarly killed.

As the body count continues to rise, Dalziel and Pascoe continue to focus their investigation on Lee Knight. Knight continues to maintain his innocence and says he's being set up by someone. The police uncover that most of the principals are involved in witchcraft of one sort or another. As the victims' bodies are being dismembered, they believe the killer is set to perform some type of ritual. Pascoe believes Knight is innocent and the true killer is someone who is well-known to Andy.

The investigation concludes.

A sunburned Det. Supt Andy Dalziel returns from his holiday in Australia and finds himself immediately investigating a murder. The dead man is Declan Roach, a researcher at the local university who was found in a university laboratory clean room. The autopsy confirms that he died from nitrogen intoxication but it is not clear at first if it was accidental or not. Roach was working under the direction of Professor Fran Cunningham, who in turn has a major contract with Aphrodite, a major cosmetics firm. She is working on a formula for a rejuvenation cream that will be nothing less than a fountain of youth and there is obviously a great deal of money at stake. Andy meanwhile is thinking of packing it in and emigrating to Australia.

Dalzil and Pascoe arrive in Amsterdam at a conference of police detectives. Local police greet them with undisguised irritation. Dalsil meets a young singer and spends the night with her, and in the morning he sees that her throat was cut. Andrew becomes a suspect in this murder.

During a bank vault robbery, bandits kill security guard Dave Compton, a former police detective who was friends with Dalzil. Latif learns of involvement in the cause of the Asian mafia.

When a woman's mummified remains emerge from the water during a cave rescue operation, Dalziel and Pascoe embark upon a treacherous murder inquiry which rocks their world to its core.

A bus with a football team collides with a train, it crashes, three team members die. The bus driver escapes from the scene of the crime. Dalzil and Pascoe believe that the accident was not accidental and that the bus was killed. In addition, an old case of the unsolved murder of a little girl that occurred during the football riots comes up.

As the body count continues to rise, Dalziel and Pascoe continue to focus their investigation on Lee Knight. Knight continues to maintain his innocence and says he's being set up by someone. The police uncover that most of the principals are involved in witchcraft of one sort or another. As the victims' bodies are being dismembered, they believe the killer is set to perform some type of ritual. Pascoe believes Knight is innocent and the true killer is someone who is well-known to Andy.

Pascoe is rushed to hospital with serious injuries following a car crash, and slips into a coma. Dalziel keeps a vigil at his bedside and realises just how much his partner means to him. Meanwhile, when a local fisherman reels in a gruesome catch – a human foot – and police divers discover other body parts amongst illegally dumped waste in a nearby lake, Dalziel finds himself at the centre of a potential murder enquiry. As the case unravels, Dalziel discovers an uneasy relationship between Wetherton's leading hospital physician, Dr McKenzie Mansfield, and neurology consultant Mr Alisdair Collinson, not to mention a snake pit of political wranglings with local business tycoon, and the main source of the hospital's funding, Barry Jemmerson. Dalziel finds himself torn between trying to cope with Pascoe's continuing deterioration and his duty as a policeman to throw himself into this very intricate and gruesome case.

Dalzil and Pascoe arrive in Amsterdam at a conference of police detectives. Local police greet them with undisguised irritation. Dalsil meets a young singer and spends the night with her, and in the morning he sees that her throat was cut. Andrew becomes a suspect in this murder.

Dalziel and Pascoe's investigation comes under increasing attack, despite their best efforts to search for clues. However, they battle harder than ever to uncover the truth about the mummified remains, which they believe are connected to the case of the Yorkshire chief constable's ex-wife, who vanished more than 20 years ago.

Mary Jackson witnesses the abduction of a schoolgirl. She tried to stop the kidnapper and was also abducted. On the same day, Pascoe witnesses how a machine tries to bring down a rich woman. The next day, he and Dalzil begin an investigation into the murder of a young music teacher who taught a kidnapped girl.

While investigating the death of a wealthy entrepreneur, Dalziel is reunited with old flame Kay Miclean, whose estranged husband was the victim. While all the evidence points towards the fact that he committed suicide, the victim's son and Pascoe believe that it could be murder. Dalziel believes otherwise until another death occurs.

At an archaeological site, a relatively fresh skeleton of a man is found. During the investigation conflict erupts between the archaeologists and local builders. Are the cost cutting antics of the local council somehow tied to the find? Or is it the underhand dealings of the contractors? Elsewhere, Dalziel is positively smitten by the new pathologist, Eleanor Brown.

When a woman's mummified remains emerge from the water during a cave rescue operation, Dalziel and Pascoe embark upon a treacherous murder inquiry which rocks their world to its core.

Having persuaded Pascoe to marry the long-suffering Ellie, Dalziel finds himself with the opportunity to whisk himself away on holiday while Pascoe is on honeymoon. But, as ever, events fail to go to plan when Dalziel's car breaks down and he finds himself amidst a river funeral procession. Invited to stay at the deceased's house by his attractive widow, Dalziel believes all his dreams have come true, until her son goes missing, the housekeeper ends up dead in Epping Forest, and an insurance investigator with a tip-off about an insurance scam regarding the family's newest business venture ends up drowned in a nearby lake.

Wetherton's domestic bliss is rocked when housewife, Susan Goodman, is murdered while doing her weekly shopping. Lethal chemical, teltroxin, is the cause of death and Susan's demise is soon followed by that of Angela Veitch. As the two victims lives are put under the spotlight, a link between them and a health retreat called Arcadia is discovered. Dalziel and Pascoe head off to Arcadia, finding the slippery Brian Fairmile ruling the roost. When another guest at the retreat is killed, Dalziel and Pascoe discover more connections between the victims, large sums of money, and a mysterious Barbara Lennox. Could the person who sourced the lethal chemical be responsible for the deaths? Who exactly is Barbara? And when two people vanish, where have they gone and are they running in fear for their lives?

Dalziel and Pascoe are thrown into uni life when the body of former uni principal Alison Girling—who supposedly died in a bus crash in Austria—is found underneath her own memorial statue in the car park. Speaking to all of the staff who worked alongside Girling prior to her death, Dalziel struggles to make any headway until the body of Anita Sewell, a student accusing another staff member of sexual harassment is found naked on a nearby golf course. Suspecting they may have a serial killer on their hands, the trail leads straight to the doorstep of the accused – Sam Fallowfield – only for the pair to find his house trashed and homophobic slurs sprayed all over the wall. Suspecting the culprit is closer to home, Dalziel's anger blows its top when he arrives back at the university to find his temporary police HQ has been trashed by students. And then Fallowfield is found dead.

Wetherton CID struggles to track down a serial killer with a penchant for words, as Messrs Dalziel and Pascoe take on their most puzzling and challenging case to date. The sublimely confident killer leaves a dialogue for the police to find after each murder. These chilling documents, carefully written and lovingly illustrated, describe each killing in detail and, at the same time, are strewn with tantalising hints and clues.

A car crash leaves Dalziel suspended from duty, pending investigation into drunk-driving allegations. Pascoe probes the source of the claims against his boss, and exposes a web of conspiracy surrounding the violent death of an elderly Army veteran — all the while coping with being a dad of the Nineties and dealing with his senile father-in-law.

A serial killer is targeting recently engaged young women, and, after every attack, phones the local newspaper and quotes from Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'. Investigations centre around a fair, where the young relative of a psychic fortune teller who 'saw' the death of Brenda Sorby is also murdered.

DS Andy Dalziel is forced to accept new recruit Peter Pascoe as the pair team up to investigate a serious murder case. Wetherton Rugby Club's golden boy, Sam Connon, wakes after arriving at home with a hangover, to find his wife, Mary, dead in the armchair. Being vice-president of the rugby club himself, Dalziel decides to ruffle a few feathers and find out who had enough of a motive to want to kill her. However, with the murder weapon nowhere to be found, evidence of the killer's involvement is rather thin on the ground. The discovery of hidden 'dirty' letters, discussion of naked foreplay at the bedroom window, and the unearthing of the murder weapon during the search for a missing eight-year-old boy make for the final pieces of the puzzle. Does someone at the rugby club bear a terrible grudge against the couple — or is the true murderer closer to home?

A young Indian woman is murdered after a heated meeting of a racially divided community who are discussing the fate of the local youth centre. Andy and his team are pulled in as there are no resources available. DC Novello drives through a riot and has her car window smashed before Dalziel & Wield come to the rescue. Dalziel is not made to feel welcome by the local Super - she calls him a country bumpkin! With the help of a Indian PC they follow up on leads - and in this case everyone has hidden agendas.

An old flame of Dalziel's dies of cancer and someone murders the village lawyer. Together these 2 events open a can of worms. Peter Pascoe goes to visit his daughter in America, right into the path of a hurricane, aptly named Hurricane Andy. A letter addressed to Andy reveals that he is a father, something he had been unaware of for over 20yrs. Before he can deal with this his son is murdered. In the end everyone has a secret and Dalziel manages to turn over every rock to expose the truth

Dick Elgood, an old fiend of Dalziel's, unofficially reports two strange, nearly fatal incidents and asks Dalziel to investigate. The subsequent investigation exposes a chain of bizarre, accidental deaths stretching back nearly three decades but not a single shred of evidence to suggest foul play! Each of the seemingly unconnected deaths have somehow or other benefited Patrick Alderman although it cannot be proven that he has any connection.

Pascoe and a pregnant Ellie visit friends in Oxfordshire but are horrified when they discover the corpses of Rose Hopkins and two of her guests. Meanwhile, back in Yorkshire, Dalziel investigates a series of burglaries in which the thief leaves a bizarre calling card.

Dalziel's car breaks down on the moors and unsurprisingly Pascoe won't come fetch him in the middle of the night Dalziel walks to a nearby pub and stays the night. The next morning he discovers a body while taking a walk and suddenly a bigger case unfolds. The landlord's son was convicted of murdering his wife but her body was never found. He has escaped while in transit and is expected to arrive at the pub to see his son. Suddenly the wife's body turns up, and it's clear it has been stored somewhere for a number of years. Dalziel does some digging and discovers the real murderer is much closer to home.

The death of businesswoman Georgina Webster, who falls from her horse during a fox hunt, turns out to be more than an accident when the leader of the hunt is sent a letter to that effect. Investigating, Dalziel and Pascoe discover someone planted gunpowder in a hedge shortly before her death, causing her horse to be startled and throw her off. As the local SABS group come under investigation, Dalziel discovers that the daughter of the huntsmaster is in fact a saboteur, and may hold more of a grudge than her compadres.

On Halloween, Kate Johnson is killed in her bedroom, the victim of a shotgun blast. Her husband Guy is the obvious suspect, having now disappeared. In an odd twist, the couple had been part of a television broadcast the previous Halloween where hypnotist Lee Knight demonstrated that people could be induced to do anything, including murder. The dead woman's daughter, Katherine Taylor, is convinced that the hypnotic suggestions of a year ago are what caused her father to kill her mother and that Knight is responsible. When she is found dead however, the case takes yet another turn. Meanwhile, Dalziel undergoes hypnotherapy to quit smoking.

A promising young musician, who has just been awarded a scholarship to the Royal Academy, is discovered dead in a lake. The youngster has an unfortunate link to Andy Dalziel, a fact that causes him to be pulled from the case by ACC Belinda Kennedy. As they investigate the youngsters troubled life more secrets come out. Dalziel meanwhile picks up a lead on the case that links him to the youngsters family and solves another mystery.

A bus with a football team collides with a train, it crashes, three team members die. The bus driver escapes from the scene of the crime. Dalzil and Pascoe believe that the accident was not accidental and that the bus was killed. In addition, an old case of the unsolved murder of a little girl that occurred during the football riots comes up.

Over 30 years into her sentence for the murder of her lover's wife, Cissy Kohler claims to have been coerced into a false confession. When released, she's in protective custody while Dalziel and his comatose ex-boss are investigated for their roles in the conviction.

When a suspected serial killer jumps to his death from the roof of a homeless hostel, the only witnesses are Pascoe and a homeless girl, who goes by the name of Abbie Hallingsworth—who has been missing for nineteen years. DC Shaz Kendall, on attachment to Wetherton CID, invites Abbie to stay while she tries to learn more about the events leading up to her disappearance. However, her coy tactics of introducing her to her long-lost family lands her in hot water with Dalziel.