Set against the backdrop of the 2011 UK summer riots, 'Urban Hymn' follows a young female offender who possesses a remarkable voice and a determined social worker who inspires her to use it.

Vincent Lamarca, whose father was executed for a 1950s kidnapping of a child, grew up to become a police officer, only to see his own son become a murderer.

In April 1994, after the airplane of the Hutu President of Rwanda is shot down, the Hutu militias slaughter the Tutsi population. In the Ecole Technique Officielle, the Catholic priest Christopher and the idealistic English teacher Joe Connor lodge two thousand and five hundred Rwandans refugees, under the protection of the Belgian UN force and under siege by Hutu militia. When the Tutsi refugees are abandoned by the UN, they are murdered by the extremist militia.

Crime novelist Catherine Tramell is living in London, and becomes the center of police investigation (yet again) when her football player boyfriend drowns in a car accident and it is revealed that he was already dead because of a drug overdose before Tramell drove the car into water. Police psychoanalyst Dr. Michael Glass is called for examining Tramell, and is intrigued by the seductive and manipulative woman. On the other hand , his friend Det. Roy Washburn is sure Tramell is guilty. Tramell asks Glass to treat her for her 'risk addiction' problem, and with each therapy session , Glass gets more and more suspicious about her intentions. As more and more murders are committed, including that of Glass's ex-wife, Glass becomes obsessed with proving Tramell's guilt even though the evidence is contradictory .