Morse gets passed over for promotion, and at the same time he is given a new working partner in the shape of Sergeant Lewis - who is not at all sure what to make of his new boss. Then Morse and Lewis face their first murder case together: Anne Staveley, a good friend of Morse's in a choral society, is found hanged at her house in the Jericho area of Oxford. At first, the death looks like suicide, but Morse has his own reasons for treating the case as a murder. A parking ticket and the play Oedipus the King, by Sophocles, help Morse to solve the mystery.
