Secrets

The Scottish literary world is buzzing, and a major prize is about to be awarded. Cameron Friel has come back to Glasgow for it, and at the ceremony, hosted by Prof Maggi McLeish, someone slips a bullet into an envelope and hands it to him. Taggart is asked who sent it. It is a world of appearances, and appearances are being tested. Then a university lecturer in creative writing is found murdered, and a thread involving the manufacture and transport of illegal drugs gets thrown into the mix.

In the other corner, Jake Koslewski comes home from a charity mission in Romania to find his wife, an alcohol counsellor, has left him for George Proctor, a previous client. Two threads, one professional and one domestic, and neither is what it first appears. Koslewski's domestic trouble looks like a side story until it stops being one. Romania and Glasgow feel far apart, and the episode makes the distance part of the story. The secrets it is interested in are the ones people keep from the people they love.

Glenn Chandler and Stuart Hepburn wrote it, Marcus D.F. White directed. Mark McManus is Taggart, James MacPherson is Jardine, Blythe Duff is DS Jackie Reid. John McGlynn is Cameron Friel, Briony Glassco is Patricia Friel, Gray O'Brien is Rob Gibson, Vincent Friell is Gerry Hill, with Iain Anders as McVitie, Robert Robertson as Dr Stephen Andrews and Harriet Buchan as Jean Taggart. The literary crowd is drawn with just enough edge to keep them interesting.

But the literary setting gives the show something different to chew on. Bullets in envelopes are one thing; the secrets people keep in ordinary lives are another, and the latter are usually the more dangerous. It is a busy episode that keeps its threads straight, and it rewards the attention it asks for.