Ray Millard, one of London's most feared and successful gangsters, faces execution by a ghost from the past, Paul Locke.
Locke is prosecuted for murder at Oxford Crown Court. The prosecutor, Luther "Lothario" Farlow, a Magdalen Scholar, views victory for the prosecution as a formality and is more excited at the prospect of seduction in his old varsity town than the forensic challenge. Locke is defended by Naomi, while Jenna Zayer, Locke's girlfriend and the black sheep of a wealthy New York family, sits alongside him, defended by Cadogan.
In a plot that sweeps from Tamazula, Mexico to the leafy lanes of rural Berkshire and then to the heel of Italy, Cadogan seeks to persuade Jenna to save her own skin at the expense of Locke and outwit them all.
