The Creeper

Two things are wrong in the estates around Causton at once. A cat burglar known as the Creeper is working the big houses, and an alcoholic writer who had been threatening a tell-all book about his friends has turned up dead. They are the sort of big, quiet houses that make a burglar's life easy and a detective's hard. The writer had made sure everyone he knew had something to fear, which is a fine way to make enemies and a poor way to stay alive. The break-ins are unsettling in the way small violations always are, but a body is a different matter. Barnaby and DS Ben Jones have to work out whether the burglar, the book, or something else entirely is behind the death.

The community under suspicion includes some heavy hitters. Paul Shelley's CC Richard Lovell and Jane Booker's Janet Lovell are the local establishment, with George Costigan's Jack Filby, Amanda Ryan's Martha Filby and Oliver Le Sueur's Rupert adding the personal history. The suspects circle one another with the ease of people who have shared too many dinners. The writer's friends are all people with reasons to want his manuscript lost, and the Creeper's break-ins give somebody a very convenient excuse to be in the wrong place. Barry Jackson's Dr Bullard has the body, Kirsty Dillon's DC Gail Stephens covers the house-to-house, and Jane Wymark's Joyce keeps Barnaby human.

Andrew Payne and Caroline Graham wrote it, Renny Rye directed. The two mysteries, the burglar and the book, weave together neatly without either one cheating the other, and the writer's own recklessness does a lot of the detective work. The episode keeps both plots moving at once, and neither waits for the other.

The Creeper makes for a good red herring. But the dead man's own career is the real problem; a man who promises to expose everyone ends up with a queue of suspects, and Midsomer knows how to count.