Season 40

A young Turkish woman - Ayse Ozbay - is found hanging from a tree in the forest near the Tyrolean market town of Telfs. At first the police assumed it was a suicide, because within a year three other Turkish girls and a young man hanged themselves from the same tree in order to avoid being forced into marriage by the family.

A body is found in a Leipzig canal. The chief inspectors Eva Saalfeld and Andreas Keppler manage to find out the identity of the man: it is Peter Schneider, a successful Leipzig entrepreneur and family man.

A murder without a motive? - Inconceivably. And yet the murder of the 48-year-old senior physician Hermann Johns seems completely unfounded. The renowned physician, who worked in the maternity ward of a Cologne clinic, seems to have been popular with patients and hospital staff alike.

Boris Blaschke's body lies on the garbage amid leftovers and packaging that could have come from the shops he worked for, because Blaschke was area manager at the discount chain Billy and responsible for three Ludwigshafen branches. When Lena Odenthal and Kopper inspect his apartment, they realize that there was practically nothing else for Blaschke besides work.

The suicide of medical student Rojin Lewald poses a number of puzzles for chief inspector Inga Lürsen and her colleague Stedefreund. The young woman, who comes from a Turkish family, wanted to divorce her German husband. She leaves behind a two-year-old daughter. Her wealthy parents are successful and respected citizens of Bremen, open-minded but devout.

In his 15th case, inspector Fritz Dellwo has to investigate on his own because his colleague Charlotte Sänger is undergoing further training. But Dellwo is ripe for a vacation and decides to take some time off - a forty-year-old detective in midlife crisis. He visits his old love Katrin and subjects his life to a thorough examination. But even in the supposed idyll, crime catches up with him.

A dead body is found in the swimming pool of the "Schloss Hamberg" boarding school: Stephan appears to have committed suicide. Lovesickness may have driven the introverted son of a renowned banker and a celebrated actress to his death. However, an inconspicuous laundry button changes the entire scenario.

Thorsten Lannert and Sebastian Bootz are investigating the case of a man who was found shot dead in the Filder near Stuttgart Airport. The murdered man appeared to have lived beyond his means, but apparently had no apparent enemies. However, Lannert and Bootz come across unforeseen connections in the professional environment of the dead man, who worked as a customs officer at the airport.

Eva Saalfeld and Andreas Keppler are confronted with the excesses of the modern job market. Temporary work and illegal employment seem to encourage abuse of people. A young manager Armin Lohmann is found dead in his apartment. The first suspicion falls on his wife Katrin, but chief inspectors Saalfeld and Keppler find bloody footprints at the scene of the crime, which indicate the presence of a strange woman on the night of the crime.

A police officer is shot dead during an identity check at Hanover-Langenhagen Airport. What looks like a criminal's panicked reaction becomes increasingly mysterious. All surveillance cameras were out at the time of the crime. For Charlotte Lindholm, however, the case seems clear after just a few hours.