| In the season premiere, Dr. Tony Hill (Robson Green) finds himself a fish out of water when he's invited to Texas as an expert witness in a case where an Iraq combat veteran has confessed to brutally slaughtering his wife and two young children. His defense team claims that he's suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but the prosecution asks Tony, who met with the soldier in the UK, to join them in disproving that claim. Alone in a strange country, surrounded by hostile lawyers and police, Tony finds himself at the center of a death penalty case with competing legal and political interests. He's insulted, threatened, framed, and physically attacked while the case takes a strange turn. Everyone seems to have a vested interest in the case - everyone except the suspect, who strangely seems determined to die. When a woman sees a young girl being snatched by a man in a car, DI Alex Fielding (Simone Lahbib) fears they may only have hours to get her back alive. Since only one percent of the victims in abduction cases survive beyond a day, new ACC James Morrison (Christopher Colquhoun) reacts by calling an Amber alert, which floods the media with public pleas for information. He also pulls Tony in to help with profiling likely abductors. Alex investigates the murder of a teenage girl and a young boy, who bear signs of ritual killings. The trail leads to a property tycoon who'll stop at nothing to get the rent, a preacher whose healing activities involve animal sacrifice, and a self-styled artist whose works not only depict violence, but are painted in blood. Tony puzzles over what the killer might want to gain and why. Is this religion? And is it one killer or two, with one suspect the acolyte of another? Two women are found raped and strangled, wearing the clothing of victims killed years earlier in Europe. Is the killer boasting to police about past crimes, leaving bodies where they can easily be found? And why is he choosing victims from the business world? As Tony tries to unravel the deadly puzzle, he's confronted by an unpleasant distraction - an 18-year-old released killer turns up on his doorstep. When a vulnerable elderly woman is suffocated in her home, Alex and Tony suspect Bernard Kelly (Ian Peck), a security guard who has a dysfunctional relationship with his mother and was seen at the scene of the crime by several witnesses. But when the killings escalate, it appears to be the work of more than one murderer. Could the deaths be connected to the sudden return of Tony's old hero, respected psychologist Jonathan Goode? |
