When a frat boy finds himself on trial in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for piracy on the high seas, Lawyer Rep Pennyworth, suspects heas 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 verbal firefight between two colleagues at a literary conference that soon escalates into burglary, theft, jury-tampering, forgery of an explosive papal document from World War IIaand murder.