A Taste of Money

An unpopular restaurant critic is found murdered in a professional kitchen, and the first suspect is a petty thief seen fleeing the scene. Critics make enemies for a living, and this one made more than most, so there was never a shortage of people who wanted him gone. The thief looks like the answer, right up until he doesn't. His secret life turns out to be tied up in the violence, and the kitchen holds a chef with a considerable score to settle.

The initial theory of a break-in gone wrong doesn't survive contact with the evidence. And the killer, the team slowly realise, has only just started. What looks like a single grudge killing opens into something with a longer list, and the police are suddenly behind the pace. The kitchen staff close ranks the way only people who have worked a service together can, leaving the team with a room full of people who all know more than they're saying.

Charlie Fletcher and Glenn Chandler wrote it, Morag Fullarton directed. Blythe Duff's Jackie Reid, John Michie's Robbie Ross, Alex Norton's Burke and Colin McCredie's Stuart Fraser investigate, with Lesley Harcourt's Gemma Kerr. Paul Ireland plays Tyler Kennedy, Nicholas Cowell is Andy, Struan Rodger appears as Angus Minto, Stella Gonet as Val and Frank Gilhooley as Murray Fettle.

A restaurant kitchen suits a murder plot nicely, full of knives and people who have spent years learning to resent each other. The episode keeps the pace steady and makes good use of the setting, a world the show rarely gets to play in. The reveal of the thief's secret life is handled with more sympathy than you'd expect, and the twist of the killer being only partway through their work gives the ending a properly cold edge. It's a solid hour of television.