Neville Lytton returns to his desk at the Daily News after a brutal mugging. He is soon involved in investigating a suicide and a Whitehall scandal helps to get him back into the routine.

A new journalist at the Daily News is instantly unpopular when it is discovered that she owes her job to the editor's patronage. Lytton sends her in pursuit of a runaway tennis star.

A famous sex symbol has a change of heart about on-screen nudity and receives a rich and mysterious visitor. Lytton is onto the story, but is waylaid by his paper's owner and a mysterious lunchtime appointment.

Lytton investigates why the same well-known faces are always appearing at an American evangelists healing ceremonies, and is also involved in a confused plan to publish his first novel. The behaviour of the young new editor of the Daily News horrifies him.

Duncan Anderson, a revered public figure and a friend of Lytton's is regarded as just another old fogey by pop columnist Trevor Bates. Meanwhile, Henry is deep ly concerned about midnight meetings in a gazebo.