Victims' advocate Camilla MacPhee is following the trial of Lloyd Brugel, a ruthless criminal kingpin charged with a fatal firebombing, and she's looking forward to seeing him convicted. But when his sleazy counsel is found dead, this conveniently delays the proceedings. The lawyer, no saint himself, was drowned and shot. Someone wasn't taking any chances. In case that message was too subtle, an old joke featuring dead lawyers shows up.
 
Camilla soon learns the victim was not the only member of the Ottawa legal profession whose death was heralded by a tasteless attempt at humour. There's also the dead judge and the real estate lawyer who perished in an unlikely accident. How many others are there? Is Brugel reaching from behind the bars of the regional detention centre to manipulate his trial and to exact revenge? If so, who is acting on his behalf? Or is some tormented victim trying for vigilante justice? And exactly how is Sgt. Leonard Mombourquette involved? None of it makes any sense to Camilla whose life was already complicated, thank you very much. Alvin's Tuscan decorating phase is making it difficult for Camilla to sell her house, and her main squeeze, Ray Deveau, would like her to keep an eye on his teenage daughters as they visit Ottawa from Nova Scotia. Camilla's favourite former client, the bootilicious burglar, Bunny Mayhew, now in hiding to protect his young family from criminal elements, is up to his shell pink ears somehow.
 
As Camilla realizes that the jokes are starting to hit close to home, she does her stubborn best to head off the killer, hampered by her assistant, the police, her bossy sisters and the arrival of her possible stepdaughters-to-be, for the Dragon Boat Races. Well, at least they're safe. Or are they?