The owner of the Wilbury Amusement Park dies from a heart attack after claiming to have seen a ghost on the haunted-house ride. Shepherd suspects foul play when he finds what appear to be bite marks on the victim's neck.

A disgraced doctor is found hooked up to an electroconvulsive therapy machine in an abandoned asylum that lacks electricity. While Sims and Breen interview the deceased's former patients, Shepherd tries to get through to the only witness to the crime: a disturbed woman who believes she is a mouse.

DSS Mike Shepherd and DC Kristin Simms return to uncover more macabre goings on in the quaint, murder-ridden town of Brokenwood. Beneath the town's peaceful veneer are buried secrets, treacherous lies, and murderous rivalries.

Detective Inspector Mike Shepherd arrives on assignment in Brokenwood, a small town where memories--and animosities--run deep. He's an experienced cop with a 1971 "classic" car, a collection of country music cassettes, and an indeterminate number of ex-wives. The new woman in his life is his assistant, Detective Constable Kristin Sims a by-the-book investigator nearly twenty years younger than her boss's car, who quickly has to get used to his lone-wolf...

On the morning of Brokenwood's annual classic-car show, the chairman of the Classic Car Restoration Society is found dead with a lungful of gasoline next to his beloved El Dorado. Shepherd and Sims try to determine if it was a petrol-siphoning accident or something more deliberate.

When the wife of a tourist-trap owner is discovered dead, the other local tourism operators are not particularly sad about her demise. The medical examiner traces her cause of death to New Zealand's only native venomous spider-the katipo. But how could one spider administer 10 times the lethal dose?

In the sleepy town of Brokenwood, New Zealand, the affable residents may seem harmless, but killers, blackmailers, and thieves lurk in every picturesque corner. To quell the community's alarming murder rate, Detective Mike Shepherd uses an unconventional style that contrasts with the methodical approach of his partner, Detective Kristin Sims, and the eager assistance of DC Sam Breen.

Four of the five committee members of Brokenwood Golf Club start on their regular morning round only to find the horribly disfigured body of the fifth, in a bunker near the first green. Suspicion falls on the so-called Clubhouse Bandit, who has been stealing trophies from the club and is dating the dead woman's daughter. The detectives discover that the deceased inspired loyalty and loathing in equal measure.

When the body of a local farmer is fished out of the river, Shepherd wonders if it was suicide, accidental death, or something more sinister. The man was a well-known drunk with a reputation for violence, and many in town might have a motive to do him harm. However, the inspector starts to believe the answer to the case may lie in an unsolved 10-year-old murder.

During a hunting trip, three friends set off in pursuit of a kill, but one of them ends up with a bullet in the head. Who fired the fatal shot? Or was there a fourth shooter? Although Shepherd and Sims find out the deceased's fiancée had been having a fling with his best man, one of her older relationships may hold the key to the killing.