- When King's family enterprise shatters into pieces and its accountant winds up stabbed, Barnaby digs into rivalries of business and blood-while Jones explores secret Masonic rites.
- Alan King dies in a car explosion on a business trip to China to set up an Asian branch for the crystal manufacture he ran in Midsomer Magna with brother Alan, who survives and marries his widow Hilary six months later, having decided to close down the home branch of the family firm, King's Crystal is in financial uncertainty. Alan's son Ian won't forgive mother or uncle, leaning on his study buddy and gay admirer David Monroe. Factory workers refuse to just accept the loss of their jobs, their foreman Jack Tewson is stopped by David from apparently aiming a hunting gun at Ian. Peter Baxter, the firm's accountant is found fatally stabbed in the closed manufacture with a Masonic dagger. Barnaby asks Jones to brush up his mason membership to go undercover in the lodge ran by Charles, with Peter's daughter Sophie's fiance James Taylor as doorman. Ian surprisingly joins, having ended his biology study and declaring to Sophie he's converted to profit, which worries unconvinced David he's not telling why. Barnaby fails to oblige with protection when David warns Ian is in danger, only to find him hung in a badly staged suicide. Thomas runs away from Cully's performance in Hamlet, inspired to stop just in time a last crime in the chain.—KGF Vissers
- King's Crystal, a glassware factory in Midsomer Magna, faces ruin following the death of its co-owner Alan King. His widow, Hilary, angers her son Ian by marrying Alan's brother Charles, and rumours circulate that Charles and accountant Peter Baxter embezzled funds. When Peter is stabbed to death with a Masonic dagger and Ian starts behaving strangely after finding his father's sketchbook, Barnaby is called. But the answer lies in Cully's new production.—Anonymous
- DCI Barnaby and DS Jones investigate the apparent murder of Peter Baxter, the accountant for the now bankrupt King Crystal company in Midsomer Magna. There are many possible suspects. The King Glass factory was owned by brothers Alan and Charles King. Six months after Alan's death however, his widow married Charles, much to the dismay of her son Ian. The young man may have inherited his father's shares in the company but his uncle Charles and Baxter have excluded him from the development of their future plans. With the company under protection, the workers, led by Jack Tewson, have lost not only their jobs but their pensions as well and are convinced Baxter had his fingers in the till. Finally there is Baxter's daughter Sophie whose ex-boyfriend James Taylor had frequent run-ins with her father. When a second murder takes place, Barnaby seems no further ahead than he was at the outset. It is a local production of Hamlet however - with daughter Cully in one of the lead roles - that sets him on the path to solving the case.—garykmcd
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