When a serial killer is murdered in prison, his deathbed confession disavows one of the murders he had previously confessed to. Morse wants to reopen the case.

An Oxford professor and fund raiser is stabbed to death at home with a weapon that is yet to be stolen from a university museum.

When the next-door neighbor of a murdered woman is also killed, Morse suspects the first shooting may have been an error.

While Morse is in hospital for a bleeding ulcer, he takes an interest in an 1859 murder and becomes convinced its resolution was a miscarriage of justice.

An ailing Morse involves himself in a year old cold murder case of a nymphomaniac is when persons of interest connected with it turn up dead.