Sleeping Dogs begins in a small town outside of Los Angeles with a deviant man, Henry Muller (Brion James), going around bullying other townspeople. He is facing murder charges, but on his day in court one witness does not show up and another changes his testimony which makes the medical testimony Quincy (Jack Klugman) provides not enough to prosecute him and the charges are thrown out. The sheriff (John Anderson) later receives a call that Muller has been shot several times and murdered, but when he arrives at the scene several of the bullied townspeople take responsibility for the shooting covering for each other. Quincy is very troubled by these events and the indifferent sheriff, so he decides to stay and investigate further as to who committed the murder.
This is a fairly decent murder mystery episode which we have been severely lacking during Season 8, and for this reason I liked it. Although the whole murder in a small town theme has been done before on Quincy and it is not the most original story in that respect, I was just so relieved to see a plot similar to those of earlier seasons that I didn't even care! There is also a plot twist at the end, so things aren't quite as straight-forward as they seem which was another interesting aspect that I enjoyed. The only annoying thing is the sheriff character who is completely ineffective and incompetent to the point where I wondered could this actually happen, but I suppose it is possible as there were many news stories and scripts based on these types of events back in the day.
Overall this is a pretty interesting and entertaining episode featuring a murder mystery investigation and Quincy doing his thing away from his stomping grounds at the coroner lab which is nice to see from time to time. I found it pretty enjoyable and I recommend viewing!