Driven by a desire for justice, and to help his former colleague Julia Piper, now married to an American lawyer, Kavanagh flies to the US to assist with the appeal of a convicted murderer on Florida's death row.

Kavanagh fights for justice on behalf of a young man brutally killed, in a rare private prosecution for murder. The odds, however, are against him, since there are powerful reasons for the truth to be kept hidden.

Kavanagh discovers how dark the corridors of power can be when he defends the daughter of a British ambassador on a charge of murdering an Austrian journalist. Meanwhile, Kavanagh's son moves into a squat.

Kavanagh prosecutes an apparently blameless family doctor in an unprecedented war crime trial. The court hears devastating testimony as victims of Nazi atrocities re-live their experiences in concentration camps, but it's left to a witness for the defence to reveal the final truth.

When surgeon Hilary Jameson successfully operates on a computer tycoon involved in a car accident, she has every reason to suppose he'll survive. Within a matter of minutes, however, the patient's wife learns that he is dead. What happened in that brief period? This is the problem Kavanagh must solve when he prosecutes on behalf of the widow.

Kavanagh defends a client who has become mute after announcing that he has killed his brother.