Patrick Tyneman's son Edward, freshly out of jail, is arrested again for the murder of a freemason. Everyone suspects Edward, but Blake puts aside his former rivalry with the Tynemans and, with help from his former police colleague Doug Lawson, tries to get inside the masonic lodge to investigate more closely.

Blake is called to a hotel where the owner has found a body in one of the rooms. His investigation takes in a shady business deal and a young woman in Mattie's care who has lost her memory after a car crash.

One of Ballarat Hospital's most prominent surgeons is found dead on his own operating table. Investigating, Blake is drawn into a web of jealousy and sexual intrigue. Meanwhile, as Chief Superintendent Munro's enmity towards Blake continues, an old ally of Blake's returns from Melbourne.

A famous actress comes to the Colonists Club to perform in a fundraiser and stuns everyone by dropping dead onstage. Convinced the killer is still in the room, Chief Superintendent Munro locks all the doors and gives Blake just one night to prove himself by solving the murder.

When tensions flare up between local workers and some communist students, the students' leader is found dead the next morning on the Eureka stockade memorial. It falls to Blake to sift through the politics and intrigue and find the killer, while Mattie's relationship with her father becomes strained when he discovers she was friends with the communists.

A young woman is shot dead at a bonfire night celebration, and the police immediately arrest an Aboriginal boy she knew for her murder. He was standing near her with a gun in his hand - it looks cut and dried. But Blake realises there's more to the murder than meets the eye and challenges the racist bias of not only the police but the whole town.

The death of a local farmer leads Blake to Ballarat's murky world of late-night backstreet gambling and two feuding brothers with contrasting fortunes.

A champion rower is thrown into the lake in celebration and never comes up again. Called in to investigate the cause of drowning, Dr Lucien Blake soon suspects foul play.