At Leighford High, the ever-resourceful Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell is temporarily promoted to Head of History when his colleague Paul Moss is chosen for an American exchange and heads off to Los Angeles. Paul's counterpart is Hector Gold, who is accompanied to Leighford by his eccentric family including his wife Camille and her parents, Jeff and Alana O'Malley.
Clearly Jeff O'Malley is quite a character - with money to burn he has been gate-crashing the local poker school, much to the dismay of its members. When events take a sinister turn and Sarah Gregson, one of the poker school's members, is found murdered, newly-promoted Inspector Jacquie Carpenter Maxwell and Henry Hall investigate, with the assistance of Maxwell. As it becomes apparent Sarah suspected Jeff of cheating and Jeff was sacked in LA for being a crooked cop, is this simply a case of murder as revenge for name-calling? Being quite the expert in solving murders, Maxwell believes there is more to it.