In a moment of madness respectable head teacher Edward Palmer approaches a rent boy on a council estate but the boy pulls a knife and is killed in the struggle. Palmer fears he has been seen and turns to his quick-witted daughter who devises a way out for him. However the dogged Inspector Quarry is breathing down his neck and he needs to keep his resolve if he is to escape detection
Fireman Joe Waterman believes his wife Sandra is two-timing him with a colleague and wants revenge, the perfect opportunity arising when a mystery man called Napeman agrees to kill her whilst Joe has an alibi. Unfortunately,once the deed has been done there is no evidence of Napeman ever having existed and Joe is squarely in the frame for murder.
One evening a man kills his baby-sitter. He convinces his wife to go along with it. She is the daughter of one of his workers. Is that the motive behind the crime?
The symptoms are distressing; the diagnosis is a shock and the future a lingering, undignified and distressing death. How many of us would rather make a quick, painless exit? The vexed question of euthanasia is at the core of Mercy as Dr Collins, a country doctor married for thirty years helps his wife Margaret with a so-called assisted suicide. After suffering from what they assume to be a bout of flu, the Collins' world is turned upside down at the devastating news that Margaret Collins has been diagnosed with a rare degenerative brain disorder. With the only prospect being a long slow painful death, Margaret takes the decision to end her life, turning to her husband for his assistance. To the police, he is potentially a criminal. To the public and to the community that know him, Dr Collins is a hero. But what is the truth?
When close friends Liam, David, and Jack read in a newspaper that there is a paedophile living on their estate, they decide that it is their duty to protect the community. After a few drinks in their local pub, they pay the man a visit, with the intention of "giving him a friendly warning" and persuading him to leave town. But their plan goes horribly wrong when David delivers a fatal blow and, to the amazement of the three friends, the man falls dead at their feet. It is an accident, but the friends panic. Liam quickly organises a cover-up, eliminating all traces of forensic evidence from the house. He seems to be an expert in forensics. The three men arrange their alibis and go their separate ways, Liam to his nightshift as a police officer. The following day, PC Liam Taylor is assigned to assist DCI Colin Duggan in the investigation of the same suspicious death. Liam sees it as a way of keeping one step ahead. Jack's name comes up as a possible suspect and Dave is beginning to crack.
An Englishman's home is his castle, and woe betide anyone who breaches the moat. But just how far should one go if their next door neighbour is driving them up their very expensive walls? Nigel Liddy and his wife Joanne live in a suburban cul-de-sac somewhere in middle England. They drive a Ford Mondeo, they vote New Labour, they used to have nice neighbours. But their neighbours moved... and in their place came the Squires. Alan and his trophy wife Debra are moving up in the world. They drive a Range Rover and a BMW convertible, they vote Conservative, and they are the neighbours from hell. Alan is oblivious to the fact that he and his family are turning Nigel from the quiet English silent majority into a vindictive, obsessed man. Nigel records all the "nightmare" events but struggles to find anyone who will take his complaint seriously and very quickly reaches breaking point. He realises there is only one solution to his problem... one final solution.
Deborah is a history postgraduate student, living with three flatmates, one of whom is her long-term boyfriend James. The relationship becomes increasingly fractious as Deborah's finals draw near. Her fitful sleep is punctuated by inexplicable bouts of sleepwalking; James seems less than sympathetic. After seeing a psychologist, Deborah realises that the cause of her unease is the fact that James is having an affair. After a blazing row, he storms out and, the following morning, Deborah wakes up next to a blood-spattered claw hammer. What has she done? Could she have attacked someone in her sleep? Is she really going insane? Or has someone taken advantage of her affliction?
A lonely call-centre supervisor, who has become obsessed with her married boss, decides that he is having an affair with one of her co-workers. She decides to eliminate all the competition by murdering the co-worker and framing the wife for the crime.
Barry Coates, a married man after a long time discovers that his wife, Angela is having an affair with his brother-in-law. He is unwilling to dirupt his comfortable domestic situation, so he plans to commit the perfect murder. He meticulously sets about to murder his brother-in-law by giving the appereance that it was a random street mugging.
Edward Buttimore is a single man in his 40s living with his mother, Rose. One day, in a moment of a road rage he kills a man on isolated country road. He attends the funeral for the victim and pretends in front of everyone that he is an old friend of his. Soon he befriends his wife, the widow Samantha Johnstone, who leans on him for support when she discovers that her late husband was leading a double life.
Tara Stevens, a young night-club singer is lately feeling stifled by her rich husband Derek, so she plans to have him murdered. She has an affair with Mark White, an ex-con who now works as a security guard in her husbands office. After she talks him into it, Mark agrees to kill her husband. After the murder has been committed, the murder is investigated by detective superintendent Mike Garret.
Successful barrister, Nicholas Chadwack, plots to murder Angela Stephenson, his mistress, when she wants from him to give her money, so she would keep their affair as a secret. He successfully frames one of his clients with the murder by planting forensic evidence at the murder scene, whom he then "defends" in court. The story plays out in flashbacks which are presented in reverse chronological order - so we first see the trial, then the method of framing, then the murder, then the development of the motive.
Emily Stapleford and Lucy Slater, a longtime friends, move in as lodgers with reclusive writer Colin Edwards in his house. Recently, there's been several highly-publicised murders of young women in the area. When a sixth victim of the murderer is discovered, Emily and Lucy's suspicions are aroused. Now they must find out if their landlord, Colin Edwards, could be the killer. Lucy becomes obsessed with the whole story so she keeps a scrapbook on the murders.
Stuart Wisher, a successful paediatric surgeon, is haunted by ghosts from his past. The happily married father of three appears to have the world at his feet. But he's tormented by a nightmare in which a nine-year old boy runs through dense woodland, pursued by a faceless individual. The nightmare always ends with the boy falling over and meeting his death. Desperate for answers, Stuart seeks psychiatric help. But nothing prepares him for what he discovers.
When Ken Grendle's own company is plunged into a financial crisis, he makes a desperate plea for help to his bank. But, with mounting bills and an overdraft limit in excess of £40,000, the bank gives the entrepreneur just one week to sort out his finances. With nobody by him, apart from faithful PA Christine on his side, Ken decides to embark on a desperate crusade to save his dying farm supplies business.
When a centuries old male body is accidentally discovered in her garden by couple of builders, Elizabeth Marton becomes convinced that her own house is haunted and she does her best to find out the truth about the man that was found dead in her garden. She begins researching by looking to her family history.
Jamie Holt, on runaway from the police, hides away in a small unknown village. There he makes a whole new life for himself and he starts running his own pub. Ten years after the runaway a face from his past arrives in the town and starts to blackmail him into carrying out a murder for him.
A female author for children books, Hat Vezey, gets terrorised by an obsessive stalker that won't leave her in peace. After she has enough of everything, Hat decides to resort to desperate measures to stop the stalker from terrorising her.
25 years after her son commited suicide as a result of school bullying, Jill Craig decides to take revenge on the bully, Scott Martin. She employs the former bully's services for odd-jobs and pretends to befriend him over a period of many months while all the time setting him up for a murder. She shows him her jewellery in order to have his fingerprints on it then plants some of it in his shed, she even secretly changes her will in his favour to give him a motive. She then kills herself in such a way as to make it seem as though Scott Martin had murdered her and tried to make it look like suicide so he could inherit her money. With her carefully engineered forensic evidence stacked against him he receives a life sentence for her "murder".
Three city dealers' scheme to siphon off money from their company's accounts is suspected by Simon's boss so he and his friends hire aging hitman Terry Cameron to do away with him. Cameron requires payment only on completion of the job, but when the boss publicly dies of a heart attack the dealers decide there is no need to pay the hitman. Cameron then starts killing the dealers one by one as a penalty for non-payment.
Alan Willis is a lazy, unscrupulous property owner leasing dilapidated homes to unsuspecting tenants. When Australian student Claire MacGregor agrees to rent a death-trap of an apartment she promptly dies of carbon monoxide poisoning from the central heating boiler. Alan finds the body, panics, and enlists the help of his wife Liz to disguise the death as suicide. But the plan, to make it appear as if she killed herself by inhaling exhaust fumes from her car, runs into problems when the real car owner appears claiming Claire could not drive.
Tom is in a state of despair. He still loves wife Helen and daughter Holly, but he's responsible for his marriage breaking down. Tom spent too much time trying to salvage his business and paid little attention to his home life. Tom desperately wants Helen back, but a reconciliation is looking highly unlikely when Helen becomes involved with Alex, a police officer. One day, when Tom picks Holly up from school, there's an altercation between him and a local teen thug named Darren. Tom takes offence when Darren jumps the ice cream queue; and using physical force, he ejects the abusive teenager from the line. Everything gets out of hand when Darren and his gang set upon Tom and Holly, hurling stones and bricks at his car. Later, a concerned Helen suggests to Tom that Alex might be of some help; but Tom's pride won't let him take an offer of help from Helen's new boyfriend. Later Tom is beaten up by a couple of unknown thugs, Tom suspects Darren's father is the culprit.
Decent, hardworking and respectable, Sanjay Patel is a corner shop owner facing financial ruin when regularly forced to pay protection money to two local bullies. When one of the thugs, Ronnie Brown, turns up at the shop, brandishing a knife and demands 'his cash', Sanjay's actions leads to disastrous consequences. With the thug missing, the investigating officer immediately suspects the corner shop owner. But with very little evidence and no body, will Sanjay be declared innocent?
