Consumed by remorse after sleeping with his best friend's wife Scarlet, and facing his ninth appearance before the Bar Association, Cleaver gets a needed distraction defending a famous chef charged with bigamy. And to add insult to injury, as he and Barney commiserate at a favorite bar, Missy arrives once more with David Potter. The bigamy case is going well... that is until Cleaver discovers his client had left out some very important details. As Cleaver receives another late night phone call from Missy, they're both left wondering what it is they can't let go of.
Whilst barrister Cleaver Greene's ex-wife may call him unreliable, his son will call him a mate. To his learned friends at the bar table he is a real wag, and to most judges he is an outrage. To the Tax Office, he is a defendant, to a certain brothel owner a legend, and to his former cocaine dealer a tragic loss.
The clients he loves the most are those that appear to be utterly hopeless. He will do whatever it takes to defend and save life's truly lost souls. The big sinners. Its drug lords. Its cannibals. Its bestialites. And at the same time, he will struggle to save himself, to stop himself falling back into the abyss that has characterised most of his self-destructive adult life thus far.
Despite his own hopelessness, his wit and charm have won him hordes of companions over the years. Most nights of the week, there is no shortage of invitations: dinner with a judge, drug dealers, or his copper mates.
He tends to wake up bruised. Physically. Emotionally. Spiritually. Usually it's a combination thereof. Occasionally he wonders how his life came to this. Living in a studio above a café in the Cross, without his wife and son, in love with a prostitute, defending hopeless cases.