Market for Murder

A suspicious car fire and a bludgeon murder sound like the makings of a grim, mechanical double inquiry. Then the trail leads Barnaby and Troy to a local reading club, and the whole tone shifts. But the members have an agenda that runs well beyond the books, and the episode becomes a reminder that in Midsomer, even the most innocent-sounding hobby can be a front for something far worse. The bookish exterior is the whole trick, and the show plays it beautifully.

The club's women are the heart of it: Ginny Sharp, Tamsin Proctor, Vera Hopkins and Marjorie Empson, all connected by their literary society and all with reasons of their own to keep its business private. The literary discussion is the perfect alibi, because no one ever looks twice at a group of respectable people talking about novels. Around them circle Harry Painter, the barman, and Dr George Bullard, called in for the medical side of things. Nobody in a reading group should be this interesting to the police, and yet here they all are.

Andrew Payne and Caroline Graham wrote the episode, and Sarah Hellings directed it for its June 2002 airing. John Nettles and Daniel Casey carry the inquiry as Barnaby and Troy, with Jane Wymark as Joyce. The supporting cast is strong: Serena Gordon as Ginny Sharp, Caroline Harker as Tamsin Proctor, Dilys Laye as Vera Hopkins, Barbara Leigh-Hunt as Marjorie Empson, Jesse Birdsall as Harry Painter, Eamon Geoghegan as the barman and Barry Jackson as Dr George Bullard.

There is a quietly satisfying joke at the centre of the whole affair. A reading club, of all things, as the cover for murder. All those evenings discussing novels, and the real plot was being written by the members themselves. Books are dangerous, it turns out. They always were, particularly when nobody is reading them.