Detective Remy McSwain is a brash, womanizing, and unconventional New Orleans police detective who doesn't always play by the rules in order to get criminals locked up. But with the help of his uncle C.D. LeBlanc, the police chief and a fanatic Civil War buff, and Remy's man-hungry detective partner, Darlene Broussard, he always manages to stay one step ahead of the law. But everything changes with the arrival of Anne Osborne, a district attorney from Washington DC whom is sent to oversee a case of illegal fishing in the remote bayous where Remy is investigating a murder which may lead to a high-up power in the city council. Anne finds herself captivated by the intense good/bad cop who tries to gain her affections with the help of his street informant and blues musician Smiley Dupree, while the local district attorney, Lightnin' Hawkins, persuades Anne to get close to Remy in order to nail him on a corruption probe the city is putting on.

Anne's fiancée, Geoffrey Stodermayer, a marine biologist, arrives in town to set an upcoming date for their wedding in which Remy drags him into his latest case of investigating a shady strip club owner's liquor imports in which Geoffrey develops an attraction to Gigi, an informant who works at the Naked Angel exotic club and is soon put in jeopardy by the thugs out to silence her and anyone else who informs on them.

Remy and his team investigate the death of an elderly and ailing socialite at a fund-raiser where Anne and Hawkins were in attendance. Hawkins thinks that the manservant, Bernard, was responsible when the cause of death is listed as a deliberate prescription medication overdose. But Remy tries to prove Bernard's innocence and in so doing learns some disturbing facts about his real relationship with his employer and his connection to his young lawyer, Felice.