Detective Chief Inspector Ross Tanner heads an elite London police squad called the Special Murder Unit, charged with conducting high-profile, press-sensitive murder investigations, a high-stress job made worse by the fact that he is going blind from a rare eye disease and trying to keep it secret. Joined by D.I. Catherine Tully (with whom Tanner is having an intimate relationship) and D.S. Doug Pewey, both of whom have guessed the truth, and Jack Boyd, who guesses wrong, Tanner uses his clairvoyant skills to investigate cases involving a tempermental superstar violinist, a sleepwalker covered in the victim's blood and a racially charged killing in which a key figure is himself blind.In the first case, "Hide and Seek," it seems police have bungled the two-year-old probe of violinist Vicky Ingham's murder. The tempermental performer was found bludgeoned to death in her apartment and the only witness was her nine-year-old son Thomas, who is too traumatized to talk. Thomas is now in the care of Ingham's ex-husband, Gavin Finn, who blocks Tanner's attempts to question his son. Meanwhile, Vicki's lover, Dr. Faiz Ahmed is the prime suspect, but he knows there is insufficient evidence against him. Tully confronts Ahmed's wife in an attempt to prove her husband's guilt. Furious, Ahmed threatens Tanner with court action; Tanner accuses Tully of insubordination -- end of relationship. Enter ambitious D.I. Jack Boyd, Tully's replacement, who concludes that his boss is fumbling the case by ordering the building of an exact replica of the victim's apartment. But Tanner's whim soon proves the key to the killer's identity.
The second case, "Parasomnia," pits Tanner against a powerful critic of the police. Lord Bruce Roddam insists his daughter Kerry Ann is innocent when she wakes up soaked in the blood of her murdered fiance. A security camera has caught her wandering from her building and returning covered in blood. The physical evidence seems ironclad, but Kerry Ann, who has a history of severe sleep disorders, has no clear motive and claims to have no memory of the crime. With his vision growing less dependable, Tanner finds it increasingly difficult to hide his condition. His deputy, Boyd, credits the frequent stumbles to alcohol; Tanner's days as head of the unit seem numbered. Groping for clues in the perplexing case, he ends up literally out on a limb with the sleepwalking prime suspect.
In the third case, "Kingdom of the Blind," black youth leader Ben Harris has been killed in what appears to be a hate crime engineered by neo-Nazi thugs. But the thugs have airtight alibis. During an interview with Harris's girlfriend, Sandra, Tanner meets Harold King, the father of Sandra's late husband. Tanner is intrigued by King, a one-time local gangster, who is now blind. King has a sixth sense about Tanner's own vision problem and tips him off that Harris was a drug dealer, his murder strictly business. The plot takes an ominous turn when Tanner's son Sam goes missing and turns up with King. Meanwhile, D.I. Boyd earns his stripes by tracking down one key player after another. But each new avenue of investigation is a dead end, as if someone is anticipating his every move.