The Best Episodes Written By Bernd Lange

A detective tries to extract the location of a body from a serial killer’s hardened lover. Then the inspector puts herself on the line and steps in.

The inspectors question a real estate developer about a missing handyman - and the skeleton found beneath his first project in the former East Berlin.

A once clear-cut case of domestic violence grows murky as a powerful father-in-law’s lawyer inserts himself into the mix to control the narrative.

When Friedemann Berg learns of his brother Reinhard's escape from the psychiatric hospital, he suspects the worst. Reinhard does indeed arrive at the Berg family's isolated farm, accompanied by the taciturn Mika Novak and the violent Luke Badrow. They also arrive in a car and carry a pistol, clearly connected to the murder that Friedemann Berg and Franziska Tobler were supposed to be investigating. It's definitely not a friendly visit, even though Reinhard acts as if he's just spending the night with the family. Held at gunpoint by Luke Badrow on the farm, the detective is trapped. He's paralyzed by Luke Badrow's increasingly aggressive behavior and by his sense of responsibility for his younger brother. And he has no way to contact Franziska Tobler, whose anger at her unreliable colleague is growing. Finally, she drives onto the farm, putting herself right in front of the unpredictable Luke Badrow's gun.

The ninth crime scene from Franconia, "High Mass for Toni," takes Chief Inspector Felix Voss (Fabian Hinrichs) into his private past. The press release describes that after years of no contact, he receives a surprise call from his old friend Marcus Borchert (Pirmin Sedlmeir), who is now a pastor. Marcus invites Felix to the Sunday sermon to reveal something about Antonia Hentschel, nicknamed Toni. Toni was Felix's great love during his student days in Berlin. But shortly before the service, Marcus is found murdered. Felix learns at the crime scene that Toni committed suicide two years ago.

Tobias Benzinger is shot dead, a young lawyer in a law firm with a considerable number of rather shady clients and a high success rate in criminal cases. Franziska Tobler and Friedemann Berg suspect that his death could have something to do with the law firm's cases. The head of the law firm, Rainer Benzinger, is extremely negative towards this theory. He retreats entirely into attorney-client confidentiality, refuses to allow any insight into his clients' affairs, and is not swayed by the fact that Tobias was his stepson. Friedemann Berg is outraged by this behavior, especially since he has learned that the two Benzingers had different opinions about the direction of the law firm.