Always a good sport, Jim McGill, the first private-eye to live in the White House, agrees to accompany his wife, the president, to London to be her escort at a dinner given by the queen—yes, the one who lives in Buckingham Palace. Problem is, he’ll have a week in England beforehand, while the president attends a G8 meeting, with nothing to do.

Then a client comes to McGill, the daughter of a former Chicago cop McGill knew but didn't like when he was a captain on the CPD. McGill’s former colleague went to Paris to scatter the ashes of his late, French-born wife in the Seine. While tending to that solemn obligation, the former cop managed to get into a brawl with and kill France’s national sports hero. The guy from Chicago claims he was only saving a blonde woman from being beaten by the Frenchman, as French law actually required him to do. Only problem is, the blonde has disappeared.

The former cop’s daughter asks McGill to find the woman and save her father.

Beats glad-handing the locals in nearby London, he decides. He just has to wrap up the case in time to get to dinner with the president and the queen.