El gran magnate de los medios de comunicación Elliot Carver tan sólo precisa hacerse con los derechos de emisión en China para completar su emporio global. Para conseguirlo desarrolla un maquiavélico plan para hacer estallar una guerra entre Gran Bretaña y China, mediante el hundimiento de un buque de guerra inglés. James Bond se embarcará en una misión contrareloj para descubrir quién está detrás del peligroso incidente.
"La hora del crimen" es un programa de televisión que solicita la colaboración de los espectadores para denunciar delitos. Llega un momento en que tienen que enfrentarse a un caso de asesinato: una mujer ha muerto apuñalada. Bobby, un joven actor, ha sido seleccionado por el programa para encarnar al criminal durante la reconstrucción de los hechos.
Receiving a tip from his dentist Jack Shorter, policeman Peter Pascoe takes a closer look at the Calliope Kinema Club, a film club notorious for showing adult entertainment movies. Shorter is convinced that one particular scene in a movie he recently saw was too realistic to have been staged with fake blood, but when Pascoe and his bluff superior Andy Dalziel starts investigating, they soon comes across the actress in question, Linda Abbott, who obviously didn't suffer from any harm and assures Pascoe that the concerns are unnecessary.
A kilo of cocaine. Hardly what two small-time crooks were expecting to find when they broke into TV director Harold Roy's shabby mansion. But nor was Harold's frustrated wife expecting to fall in love with one of the intruders. Now she's going to make a deal with him - for both her husband and the drugs. But the precious powder belongs to someone else. And he wants it back. So if he feels he's been double-crossed, there's no telling what might happen. Detective Inspector Resnick has a hunch that there's more to this story than meets the eye. And as his investigations lead him down the mean streets of the TV industry and an inner-city drugs ring, it's obvious that more than one person is dancing on thin ice
