In the midst of fraud and deception, murder and betrayal, Darcy battles a legal system that seems more adept at administering injustice than in protecting the innocent.

Sometimes a simple plea bargain is not what it appears to be, as criminal defense attorney Darcy Cole learns when he takes the case of Harry Feigler, a Chicago attorney who specializes in expunging the records of men who have been caught soliciting prostitutes. Sometimes also, Darcy reminds his associate Kathy Haddon, when a husband regularly comes home in the evening smelling like a bar and claiming to have been out with "friends," there may be no cause for alarm. Sometimes, too, a black man accused of murder in an apparently open-and-shut drug case has been set up and is innocent, and a beautiful, apparently distraught young woman who reports the disappearance of her boyfriend to the police is lying to distract attention from a real crime.

Sometimes even a middle-aged police officer whose life is spiraling toward disaster discovers the inner qualities of character that attracted him to law enforcement in the first place, and the luck of the draw in emergency room physicians brings together a disenchanted lawyer and an overworked doctor in a romance that sizzles from the moment they first meet. These story lines, which at first glance appear to have no connection to one another, come together with high drama and humor in Plea Bargain. Nothing, it seems, is as it appears, and Darcy must sift through the illusions and deceptions to come to the actual truth.