The daughter of a wealthy Jewish businessman and her boyfriend plan to murder a member of the neo-Nazi opposition. They are successful in killing a 17-year-old skinhead at a demonstration, yet when Mark, the boyfriend, is arrested, he claims the killing was an accident. Meanwhile, the Kavanagh's home life is abruptly ruffled by the news that Kate, an undergraduate at Cambridge, is having an affair with her married tutor.

Kavanagh is forced to replace the prosecutor who suffers a heart attack while on a Customs case involving the importation of drugs from Holland.

What appears to be a open and shut case in the murder of a young policewoman turns out not to be what it initially seems under cross examination.

Even though he has not done a personal injury case for 20 years, Kavanagh is chosen as the leader in a case against a Thames River Recycling Centre, whose employee sustained spinal and brain damage from being struck by a swinging container. Meanwhile at home, Kavanagh's son besieges him with a plot to buy him a car.

The son and daughter of a prosperous farmer are charged with the murder of their father and stepmother. A planted shotgun seems to provide the only evidence linking them to the gruesome killings. Kavanagh represents the daughter and loses the case, but in the appeal Kavanagh convinces the court that judicial errors were made in the original trial and his client is released.