The Best Episodes Written By René Balcer

The death of an eccentric banker in his nintieth floor apartment leads the detectives to investigate his professional contacts and family members.

Director: John David Coles

Writer: René Balcer

The murder of a mortician and the discovery of corpses at a crematorium lead the detectives to a family man claiming to have a consulting business but suspected of being a contract killer with a penchant for perfection. Goren attempts to prove this by setting up a scheme that puts his "fear of making a mistake" in jeopardy.

Director: Darnell Martin

Writer: René Balcer

When a bookkeeper goes missing, Goren and Eames are led back to the death of her brother, a hitman, two years earlier. An imprisoned mobster seems to be their best bet, but when another body turns up it takes the case to a whole new level.

Director: Constantine Makris

Writer: René Balcer

Detectives Eames, Goren, Barek, and Logan must solve a case that involves a teenage girl missing in New York City. While Barek and Logan search around for another missing girl, Eames and Goren work to uncover a mystery with a judge and his son.

Director: Jean de Segonzac

Writer: René Balcer

The kidnapping of a popular video blogger and her boyfriend--which is witnessed live on the Internet--seems suspicious to Logan and Wheeler.

Director: Tom DiCillo

Writer: René Balcer

The death of a young, pregnant Pakistani woman leads Logan and Wheeler to question the man she was secretly dating, as well as both his and the victim's disapproving relatives.

Director: Steve Shill

Writer: René Balcer

Eames re-opens the case into her husband's murder.

Director: Jesús Salvador Treviño

Writer: René Balcer

Goren and Eames investigate the death of a writer, and whether her torture has ties to the 'hood she came from.

Director: Ken Girotti

Writer: René Balcer

Goren and Bishop pursue a teenage Svengali who convinces three impressionable young girls to commit multiple homicides in the cause of a twisted philosophy.

Director: Frank Prinzi

Writer: René Balcer

Goren investigates when his nephew, a prisoner who's bipolar, claims that inmates are being abused to the point of murder.

Director: Ken Girotti

Writer: René Balcer

Logan relives unhappy childhood memories when a friend is found dead, a presumed suicide, until the investigation reveals recent contact with a former priest, with a history of pedophilia.

Director: Dann Florek

Writer: René Balcer

After the tyrannical owner of a Manhattan luxury hotel is found submerged in her bathtub, evidence seems increasingly to indicate that the woman's death was the work of her deeply frustrated, long-suffering daughter.

Director: Jean de Segonzac

Writer: René Balcer

Stone is determined to see that a teenage boy doesn't get away with murder twice when the young man is brought to trial for the shooting death of one of his friends.

Director: Daniel Sackheim

Writer: René Balcer

During a 24-hour period, Briscoe and Logan have a heavy caseload that includes 5 unrelated murders and a domestic quarrel, which results in the maiming of the husband.

Director: N/A

Writer: René Balcer

The trial of Eddie Newman begins but the prosecution's chances of conviction are hampered by a "dream team" of defense attorneys, Gorton's personal pressures on Ross, the public questioning of the relationship between Curtis and Lisa Lundquist, and a surprise accusation.

Director: Edwin Sherin

Writer: René Balcer

Goren and Eames investigate the death of church sexton Morris Abernathy but soon find their chief suspect, Kevin Donovan, dead in his apartment. After realising that someone performed last rites over Donovan's body, the police realise that a priest was involved in the murder, and are led to a priest who has been desperately trying to keep a twenty-year-old secret hidden. Goren risks the prosecution's case by protecting an innocent third party who could lose everything if their own secret comes out.

Director: Constantine Makris

Writer: René Balcer

The detectives investigate a murderer who poisons hospital victims with cyanide. They suspect a nurse whose profile is typical, but when they discover more murders away from the hospital they have to widen their search.

Director: Gloria Muzio

Writer: René Balcer

The deaths of a reporter and his fiancée, gunned down on orders, leads the detectives to investigate political bribery involving the governor's office, which Deakins isn't pleased with.

Director: Steve Shill

Writer: René Balcer

A psychiatrist who provides expert testimony at criminal trials lays down an insanity defense to hide his obsession for his younger girlfriend after revealing to her that he hired a corrupt detective to murder her brother-in-law at his son's Bar Mitzvah after alleged reports that her niece had been abused by him.

Director: Steve Shill

Writer: René Balcer

When the father of a young woman who has been out all night clubbing is found dead in his boat house, Goren and Eames investigate the mysterious club owner only to realise that he is an undercover FBI agent and that the Bureau will not risk their undercover operation even to stop a killer.

Director: Jan Egleson

Writer: René Balcer

The detectives investigate the murder of a judge's clerk, with their attention initially going to the judge himself, who had been having an affair with the young woman.

Director: Gloria Muzio

Writer: René Balcer

The detectives investigate a slain bank robber and check out his sister, who is involved with a bogus United Nations economist. As the detectives close in on the suspect, Goren learns the suspect wants his children's approval and must stop him before any more murders.

Director: Juan José Campanella

Writer: René Balcer

When the well-preserved body of a woman tortured and murdered twenty years earlier appears on the banks of the Bronx River, chemical residue on the body leads Goren and Eames to the basement of the house in which the body had originally been buried and to the junkie whose parents owned the home. When the junkie ends up murdered as well, their investigation focuses on his college classmate, a man with a history of drugging and sexually assaulting women.

Director: Jean de Segonzac

Writer: René Balcer

As Goren and Eames sift through the likely suspects in the murder of a university president and his assistant, they discover that the culprit is a wily adversary who has more than these crimes to hide.

Director: Adam Bernstein

Writer: René Balcer

The detectives follow the trail when an assistant district attorney confronts and kills a hired gunman following a series of death threats. They first suspect his wife, a prominent defense attorney, through a convict whose case was being prosecuted by the A.D.A. and the rumors of her romantic affairs. When they realise that there are cracks in their seemingly airtight case, Goren has to keep Carver in the dark about some details to prove his theory.

Director: Gloria Muzio

Writer: René Balcer