Superintendent Sandra Pullman leads the unsolved crimes unit of the Metropolitan Police. Her team includes three aging former detectives lured out of retirement. Can a curmudgeonly trio of crime busters learn new tricks to crack tough crimes? Or are old-fashioned hunches and footwork still best?

Thirty years past their prime, the band Hired Gun aims for a comeback at the Midsomer Rocks Music Festival. With Barnaby among the legions of fans who still love the band's music, their revival holds promise--until someone sounds a discordant note by killing off the musicians, one by one.

A mysterious creature is killing sheep in Midsomer County, but it soon moves on to larger prey.

Tennison relocates to the Greater Manchester Police for a stint as a community relations officer at local schools. Later she is assigned the shooting case of a young drug dealer, and she pegs a corrupt local drug lord as the killer. Somehow he stays one step ahead of her investigation. Is he getting inside information?

"Educator Connie Bishop faces a slew of troubles. A decline in pupils may close down her village school, and she herself suffers from night terrors. But has she been imagining an intruder in her home, or are her suspicions well founded? When a local politician dies in her garden, it confirms her worst fears. As Barnaby and Jones investigate, another man is murdered on Connie's property. Is the sweet-natured schoolteacher a victim--or a killer?"--Container....

Ripe for retirement in the eyes of some, Tennison is still up for a fight, and she'll need all the energy she can muster when she takes on the darker forces of British government in search of a sadistic killer with a guilty past.