John Nettles

A council clerk is shot, and during their investigation Barnaby and Jones find that the victim was an expert blackmailer. A phone number on the dead man's blotter sends the two to the seaside in search of his latest targets. Meanwhile Joyce is convinced a local farmer knows more than he's telling.

Caroline and Peter Cave are househunting, and come across an old rundown house, Winyard, in the woods. One morning they are found garroted in their car 200 yards from the house. The murder weapon is a piano wire. The first one on the scene is DC Ben Jones, who is persuaded by Inspector Barnaby to assist him in his investigations, as DS Scott is off sick (and never to return).

A tour of Plummer's famous relish factory ends in tragedy when one of the visitors is crushed against towers of relish bottles and dumped naked into a 200-degree sterilizer. When the dead man is found to be an executive with rival company Fieldway Foods, Barnaby and Scott's investigation uncovers many secrets and lies among the Plummer family. Someone is also trying to frighten matriarch Amelia Plummer. But who feels strongly enough about Plummer's Relish to commit murder?

When solicitor Nick Turner falls to his death from a roof, Barnaby and Scott must discover if it is suicide or murder. Nick had money problems and rival lawyer Otto Benham was spreading rumours that he was stealing from clients. One night, Otto is drugged and made into a human target in the middle of his croquet lawn, then fired on with bottles of vintage wine using his replica Roman catapult. The elaborate murder looks like revenge - but what for?

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Jamie Cruickshank, a bartender at the Maid in Splendour public house, is keen on Bella Monday, a barmaid, and follows her to a tumbledown old cottage in the woods, only to be blasted with a twelve-bore shotgun. Then the pub landlord's son, Stephen Bannerman, is also killed in the same way. Barnaby finds there was ill-feeling between locals and newcomers to the village and also between the landlord and his aggressive son, who was in the process of taking over the business.

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The Midsomer Literary Festival opens with the real-life murder of a famous author at Midsomer St Michael. In investigating the killing, Barnaby and Scott find that the village highbrows are busy with corruption, embezzlement, and sexual peccadillos of various kinds. And the dead bodies go on piling up.

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Midsomer Barrow landowner Gareth Heldman is murdered with an Iron Age spear, on the same spot where his father was killed many years before during an archaeologists' dig at the village's prehistoric earthworks. Meanwhile, troupes of new age travellers (whom Heldman strongly disapproved of) are arriving to celebrate the summer solstice on June 21st.

Barnaby finds Heldman was a womaniser, with a tangled web of offspring. He also has to reopen the file on the thirty-year-old murder of Roger Heldman and investigate a tale of lost treasure.

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Barnaby's new partner, Sergeant Dan Scott, arrives from London's Metropolitan Police and expects to have a quiet life. But then the murders begin. The first victim is Fiona Thompson, stabbed several times with a long knife on her way home from a flamenco night at Midsomer Mallow village hall - and a witness reports a mysterious squeaking noise at the scene of the crime...

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The Barnaby-Troy partnership is about to come to an end, as Troy has passed his inspector's exam and is moving on. However, the murderers of Midsomer go on piling up the bodies.

Joyce Barnaby gets trapped in a fallen canal tunnel, and in getting her out seven skeletons come to light in a hidden chamber. Meanwhile, two local tearaways are shot dead in the woods at Midsomer Worthy, and a tramp called Tom is accused of the killings. While Troy looks into the shootings, Barnaby wrestles with an old mystery. And although six of the skeletons found in the tunnel date from the 18th century, one is much more recent.

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Someone is decimating the ancient Smythe-Webster family of Upper Walden, and the bad blood between the villages of Upper and Lower Walden is renewed with a vengeance.

First, young heart-throb actor Larry Smith (alias Laurence Smythe-Webster) dies in an explosion at a publicity event for a new film. House of Satan is based on a book by a local writer, the late Ellis Bell of Lower Walden - a village whose inhabitants are referred to by its Vicar, the Reverend Simon Smythe-Webster, as "the weasels of the wild wood".

The next to die is Larry's uncle, House of Satan producer Frank Webster (Francis Smythe-Webster), electrocuted to death on his exercise bike. Finally, Barnaby's principal suspect, Danny Pinchel, the family's cook, is drowned in a large bowl of tomato soup...

Barnaby realizes he is dealing with an historic grudge, and he enquires into the family's antecedents.

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Barnaby's wife, Joyce, finds a dead body on the Midsomer Florey village green while taking part in a watercolour painting class, and she recognizes it as the elderly Miss Fairfax.

Barnaby is given the case, then finds himself taken off it and replaced by a team from the National Intelligence Squad, while he is assigned to deal with a missing handbag. However, he continues his investigation into the murder, finding deceit and double-dealing. It appears that 'Miss Fairfax' was not an elderly spinster at all, but a young detective sergeant from the National Intelligence Squad working under cover, and that her colleagues are busy fitting up the village handyman for the murder of an old lady who never was.

He discovers that someone is busy hunting for some five million pounds still missing from an old robbery. In the closing moments, Barnaby has to lock two of the National Intelligence Squad's officers in a bank strong-room, where they are trying to snatch the missing cash, and to arrest the head of the Squad's operational team for the murder under investigation.

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Accusations of unsportsmanlike conduct on the river are bedevilling the Midsomer game fishermen, and Barnaby has to interview elegant widow Isobel Hewitt, a spendthrift, fast-living, Jaguar-driving 75-year-old, when another lady fly-fisher accuses her of a violent assault. Then first Isobel and later her fellow villager Dr Duncan Goff are found on the river-bank with their skulls smashed in, and there is no shortage of suspects - including an antique dealer who apparently specializes in befriending elderly widows.

The picture is confused when one of the suspects, chef-restaurateur Keith Scholey, is found frozen to death in his walk-in deep freeze, with the lock of the door jammed by a nail. Troy has a theory that Scholey was the killer and has made his suicide look like murder, but will that be the end of the affair?

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The village of Midsomer Parva is dominated by the imposing Devington School - as a seat of learning, Devington may be undistinguished in the great world, but it is socially well-connected and it has economic clout. When the College's Pudding Club sets off a murderous chain of events, ranks begin to close against Barnaby and Troy, and they need inside information to catch the killer. Is it someone from the local village who has a grudge against the school or is the killing motivated by activities at the school?

In the village of Midsomer Wellow, someone is killing off the bellringers of the parish church, in the week before a big bell-ringing competition. One young woman on the team is even shot dead in the churchyard on her wedding day.

Before he can crack the case, Barnaby has to understand the significance of an old killing in the same village in the year 1840, when the Midsomer Wellow Vicar of the day, the Reverend Jonathan Ebbrell, was murdered and thrown down a well by the bellringers of his church. So where are the Ebbrells now?

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