Vera's reunion with her first-ever sergeant, Stuart Macken, occurs under tragic circumstances when his house is petrol-bombed. Stuart is badly burned by the attack and his 18-year-old daughter Stella is left fighting for her life in intensive care. Vera is shocked to see that Stuart is a shadow of the man she knew 20 years before and, when her investigation uncovers unpleasant revelations about his personal life, she is faced with some long-buried memories of her own.

Vera investigates the case of a murdered social worked named Jenny Lister, who was universally considered to have been principled and popular. However, in an overworked and understaffed social work system, a notorious case involving the death of a child seems to hold the key to solving the killing. As Vera pursues the truth, she discovers the real secret at the heart of Jenny's death - and the killer who will stop at nothing to keep it hidden

DCI Vera Stanhope investigates the murder of 29-year-old Niall Coulter. With those closest to Niall intent upon obscuring the truth, it is not until the body of a drug dealer is found washed up on a Northumberland beach that the dreadful truth begins to emerge about Niall's past. While coping with revelations from her own past, Vera sifts through evidence of the grief, love and addiction that characterised Niall's life and deduces that his murderer acted through selfless and unrequited love.

DCI Vera Stanhope and DS Joe Ashworth investigate a suspicious death in an army barracks. Although the scene has been made to look like a suicide, Vera quickly establishes that Staff Sgt 'Dev' Deverson was murdered. Sensing a connection to a soldier named Ollie who was killed in Afghanistan, Vera interviews Dev's loyal comrades and Ollie's grieving family, exposing a deeply concealed trauma at the heart of the crime.

Vera takes a look into a suspicious fire that rips through a holiday park on the Northumberland coast. Three cabins are destroyed and the body of a woman is discovered inside inside one of them.

Following the discovery of the remains of a teenage girl half-buried in a Northumberland wood, Vera and her team end up looking into a thirty-year old mystery.

Vera investigates the death of an unidentified man dredged up from a slurry pit on a remote Northumberland farm.

A dock worker plunges from the roof of a multistory car park whilst picking up daughter from her school prom and everything points to foul play.

The body of a woman is found on the bleak Northumberland moors.

The detective investigates the discovery of a young man's body in an area notorious for illicit teenage gatherings, the corpse wrapped in plastic sheeting and having received a blow to the head.

DCI Stanhope and her team, including new recruit DC Hicham Cherradi, travel to a remote country house when the woman looking after it is killed.

A fisherman's body is found tangled up in a North Sea trawler's net. Vera and her team investigate with the help of the local harbourmaster