Honey Trap is a journey into the worlds of tabloid journalism, Hollywood snitches, drug dealers and terrorists. It's also the tragic love story of British journalist Mike Delano and Rachel, daughter of Lord Maxwell Rothenberg, a criminal media tycoon. Their affair sparks a conflict between Delano and Rothenberg that will end only when one of them is dead.
The action starts when Delano overcomes Iraqi terrorists bent on beheading him. Instead, he escapes, but not before decapitating the executioner who slaughtered his cellmates. Delano writes a best seller about his exploits. Impressed, Rothenberg hires Delano to edit his ailing London tabloid. Circulation soars under his editorship, but idealistic Mike hates what the job requires. Rothenberg fires him and brands him a thief after he falls for married Rachel who becomes pregnant by him. Furious, Rothenberg abducts his daughter to Switzerland, keeping her in drugged captivity after a forced abortion.
Delano goes to Hollywood determined to wreck Rothenberg's prized Paragon studio and win Rachel's release. He sets up a "honey trap" for Paragon's biggest star, Morgan Masterson. Delano's hidden camera records Morgan's cowardice leaving a blonde flight attendant to a heroin overdose death after a drugs-and-sex marathon. To stop the ruinous story, Rothenberg is forced to offer Delano $100-million and Rachel's release, but he delivers only half the cash. Delano's tipped off to Rothenberg's hitmen sent to silence him; instead, he kills them. Angry, he releases his superstar expos? Masterson, given a last chance by Rothenberg to salvage his career, goes to a Florida movie set that's attacked by the tycoon's Islamist terrorist enemies who crash a helicopter and later bomb his Oscars' party. Delano saves lives by disarming two of the three bombs.
Masterson, a friend of the lead terrorist, didn't warn Rothenberg about the Florida attack. Rothenberg decides Masterson must die for his treachery. Hiding out with a Colombian cartel relative, Carlos Bomba, Masterson and the drug boss are lured to Rothenberg's private island with false career promises. Instead, they are murdered, thrown alive to sharks off the tycoon's boat. Delano gets the story, but horrified Rachel begs him not to publish. She leaves Delano when he ignores her plea to conceal her father's guilt. Yet when she and Rothenberg are kidnapped by the cartel, Delano saves them in a courageous land-sea rescue.
The lovers reunited, she's again pregnant, running the media empire. They visit Rothenberg serving life in prison. Rachel is mortally wounded and Rothenberg dies in a grenade attack mounted by the unforgiving cartel. Rachel is sustained on life support just long enough to deliver their child, Daniel. Delano inherits the Rothenberg media empire he tried to destroy, making it a huge success for Daniel to eventually take over. The cartel's last bid for revenge fails when teenaged Daniel saves his father, killing the gunman sent to assassinate them both.
Mike returns to respectability, buying the British paper he once worked for, expunging his tabloid past. One more thing he must do: return beloved Rachel's remains to her native Britain. He's the sole mourner at the lonely interment.
