The police cannot be trusted to solve the mystery, because this town has been profoundly corrupted. In Moonlight Bay, the purpose of the police is often to conceal the crime, rather than to catch the perpetrator.

Christopher Snow, whose rare genetic disorder -- xeroderma pigmentosum, XP -- leaves him dangerously vulnerable to light, sets out to find the missing five-year-old son of a former sweetheart...and then the other lost children. Chris believes they are still alive. The disappearances have something to do with clandestine scientific experiments at a nearby, abandoned military base, Fort Wyvern. And now time is running out. With his exceptional dog, Orson, and his friends, Chris challenges the powerful and violent people who would conceal even the most heinous crimes in order to keep the secrets of Fort Wyvern. His greatest advantage is that, forced by XP to live a life in shadows, he knows the night world better than anyone -- better even than his adversaries, who seem at one with the darkness.