When a fraternity boy finds himself on trial in Milwaukee for piracy on the high seas, Lawyer Rep Pennyworth suspects he's being used as an unwitting accomplice in a cheap publicity stunt. Meanwhile, his wife, Melissa, the professor-half of the couple, gets caught in the middle of a conflict between two colleagues that soon escalates into burglary, theft, jury-tampering, forgery of a papal document from World War II, and murder.

Caught between an investigative reporter who's still having flashbacks to 1968, a professor whose acute political correctness masks ruthless academic ambition, an engineer whose father's death looks suspicious, and a brace of cunning lawyers out for blood, Rep and Melissa have to combine their talents to stay off the casualty list while they figure out what's really going on.