Returning: New Tricks

The Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad of New Tricks return to television next month with the Seventh Season, which aired in the UK in September.

An Eighth Season will air in the UK later this year.

The team is asked to reopen a case when Vicky Anderson tells them that a psychic has uncovered new information about her father’s murder – allegedly gained from the deceased himself – information that has never been disclosed to anyone outside the investigation.

Vicky’s father, Douglas Anderson was a wealthy, well-respected financier in Hong Kong, and her best friend Penny was the daughter of Douglas’s friend John Plummer, who headed a major construction company on the island. Both Vicky and Penny were only children and both had lost their mothers. When Plummer was found guilty of defrauding a Chinese corporation over a construction deal and sent to prison, Douglas became Penny’s guardian, and so Vicky and Penny went from being best friends to de facto sisters. When the British lease on Hong Kong expired in 1997, Douglas decided to retire back to England and took the two girls with him.

Clearly sceptical about the psychic’s information the team starts digging and discover that the victim, Douglas Anderson, wasn’t as squeaky clean as he might have appeared. Although he took over the care of Penny, it would appear that he also duped his friend Plummer out of money owed from a fraudulent scheme and allowed his friend to take the rap for the scam (Plummer subsequently died in prison).

And then, two years ago, Anderson apparently surprised one or more burglars, whereupon a fight ensued, during which he suffered a heart attack and died, and the burglars were never caught.

With Vicky now under the spell of psychic Sebastian Carter, he tells her that Douglas’s ‘spirit’ needs his daughter to carry out for him a quest for him. Carter says he keeps referring to “the key”; several keys were found scattered around the crime scene as if someone had tried them all in the various drawers and boxes in the room, a fact that was never made public. So where is Carter getting this information from? Anderson’s adopted daughter Penny expresses her anguish that Vicky has been taken in by Carter but can shed no light on the existence of an unopened box Halford mentions in passing.

Meanwhile the team discover there was another person who went to prison as a result of Plummer (and apparently Anderson’s dodgy dealings in Hong Kong) – his name was Lau Cheung. Perhaps he came to the UK to seek revenge? And there’s another lead – Simon Beswick, former cellmate of John Plummer who since his release has returned to the UK and is now working as an accountant in Chinatown.

It returns 8:30pm Friday February 4th on ABC1.