In "Small Mercies," we travel to Little Worthing, a tourist town known for it's model village. The expansive garden and small buildings are maintained by a groundskeeper and owned by a pair of old spinster sisters, and it seems the entire economy of the village is centered around this scaled-down tourist attraction.
Needless to say, a dead body found in the model village itself is bound to put a bit of a kink in the attraction's revenue, and given the unusual way the body is laid out, it's clear that whomever killed this episode's first victim had a bit of a sense of humor. When the body of a local man, Richard Tanner, is discovered, he is tied down to the ground with many of the model people positioned around him. The parallels between this image and the classic scene from Gulliver's Travels are not lost on anyone, and when Barnaby and Jones find drawings of the same scene from the classic book pinned to the wall at the local school, it becomes really hard to tell just who might be the murderer.
The collection's second episode, "The Creeper," starts off focusing on a series of cat burglaries. Jones is assigned the case, but he can't seem to get a break in it. The criminal seems to have a knack for being able to get past even the toughest of security systems, and taking the oddest things. The case gets a bit more attention when a prominent family is hit, and to make things worse, it seems The Creeper has actually killed this time. As the mysteries start to unfold, it seems clear that the people whom The Creeper has robbed are connected, but it's hard to tell exactly how, and it isn't long before it becomes obvious that The Creeper is trying to send out a message about some long-buried secret.
The final episode, "The Great and the Good," brings up the question about a person's guilt if they are sleep walking. When people start dying near the house of a school teacher, she begins to wonder if she is committing the murders. Her strange dreams combined with a series of cries for help when no one is actually going after her makes her start questioning her sanity.
Meanwhile, the village's biggest charity event of the year is approaching, and while our teacher normally heads up the committee to getting everything together, her restless nights start to get the better of her and the trophy wife of a electronics tycoon steps in to take over the job. The problem is, she is forcing locals to bow out of the charity auction event in order to get more high-brow guests to toss their hats, and money, into the arena. The question is, is the school teacher committing the murders in her sleep? Is she guilty, if she is or is someone just taking advantage of her sleeping disorder to confuse her further?
All three episodes were good mysteries that were both intriguing and enjoyable. While some of the solutions fell into place just a bit to conveniently for my liking, these are easily overlooked. Midsomer Murders: Set 18 comes with only one special feature, a half-hour interview with Hughes about becoming an actor and working alongside Nettles. While it isn't a lot, fans of the series should find it interesting.
Like the previous boxed set, this one should do nicely in most fan's collections, but given the nature of mysteries in general, a rental might be enough. After all, it's hard to warrant a re-watch of a mystery after you know who did the deed.
