When a highly-trained sniper takes out a patrol car's front tyre, sending it crashing off the highway, the tactics used suggest to Hooker and Romano that the attacker is an ex-Vietnam war veteran gone bad, who has made the hit as practice for a bigger strike. But the culprit is closer to home than they expect, and is planning to turn an upcoming visit by the Mayor to the LCPD headquarters into a nightmare, with his own little war-zone...

After arresting a teenager who's been left to take the rap for a murder by his fellow gang members, Hooker discovers that the youth is hearing impared. Convinced of the boy's innocence and that his membership in the gang is a cry for help, Hooker and Romano try to help the youth's hearing problems and to root out the real culprits behind the drugs-related killing. But Hooker can't help the teenager unless the boy is first willing to help himself...

As Hooker and Romano pursue a pair of thieves who have stolen a batch of valuable new furs, Hooker rescues the robbers' hostage - a model who turns out to be an ex-girlfriend of Romano's. Brought back together by the incident, Romano and the girl become close, and Romano quickly develops deep feelings her. But unbeknown to him, she is actually involved with the thieves, and is giving them information that she's extracting from Romano to help them plan their next heist...

When Hooker and Romano spot a cocaine deal taking place and intervene, they are surprised to find that the supplier is a family man with no prior convictions. With the help of an old flame of Hooker's, a reformed gambling addict, they uncover a crooked gambling club owner's scheme that involves having members run up huge debts on rigged games, and then forcing them to make drug deliveries to help pay off the money they owe...

Responding to a shooting at a cock-fight in China Town, Hooker thinks he catches a glimpse of a face from the past in the crowd. As he investigates the illegal dealing of automatic weapons in the area, the face turns out to be the daughter of a woman who he was once in love with, but had to cut off their relationship after her husband, presumed dead, had turned up alive. But now, the man is involved with the gun dealing, and sees that he has an old score to settle with Hooker...

Following the bludgeoning to death of a nurse, Hooker and co. investigate the case, the latest in a series of similar murders - a string of killings that Hooker investigated years before that has recently began again, in which the attacker sends a rose to the intended victim prior to the attack. With the aid of a disabled veteran detective and a top psychiatrist, Hooker and the team investigate and find evidence that the murderer, always dressed as an old-fashioned nurse, may actually be a man. But the pattern of the killings suggests that they have less than 48 hours to catch the killer before he / she strikes again...

A worker from the Police precinct is attacked and raped, the latest in a series of rapes and robberies where none of the victims are able to identify their attacker. Investigating, Hooker and co. find that all the victims had prior been visited by a telephone repair man, information which enables them to track down the prime suspect, who ends up being killed as the result of pursuit. But Hooker fears that the dead man was actually the attacker's apprentice and not the actual attacker – a fear that is proven when the attacks continue...