Deed presides over the murder trial of Maurice Hart, a black defendant who shot and killed the driver of a van which ran over and killed Hart's daughter in a hit and run accident.

At the same time, the judge is keen to investigate Hart's attractive defence counsel more closely, and he also jousts over the case with the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police at a London fencing club. Of course, Deed undertakes these misdemeanours against his professional code in supposedly good causes. These include helping his student daughter Charlie to protest against genetically modified crops (and springing her from the cells when she is arrested) and working out how to free his vigilante defendant.