The owner of a private hospital is found murdered in his car, after a series of anonymous threatening letters. Suspicion falls on a retired book-maker whose daughter suffered severe brain damage as a result of negligence during an operation some years before. Morse spends a lot of effort in investigating the possibility that the dead man was criminally negligent, and concludes that he was. While he does his best to bring the killer to justice, Morse does not seem very troubled that at the end of the day he is unable to nail him.

Morse and Lewis hunt a violent rapist who has escaped from prison. They find themselves drawn into an under-world of satanists, and some of them seem more respectable than others.

A nasty but very rich businessman and a world-famous opera singer are in Oxford to receive honorary degrees from the Chancellor of the University. However, the ceremony has to be abandoned when a sniper opens fire on the procession of dignitaries. The singer is seriously wounded, but was she the intended target?