Business is slow for Burlington, Vermont, private investigator John "Hack" Loomis, so when Loomis's assistant Connie Noble asks him to look into the disappearance of her friend Belle Ryerson, Loomis agrees. Belle went missing after attending a meeting of a local UFO group run by a charismatic psychiatrist who treats people who believe they've been abducted by aliens, and also by a woman who claims to be in contact with an alien mother ship.
Just when Vancouver commercial photographer Tom McCall thought he'd got his life back on track, a complete stranger shows up dead on the roof deck of his floating home. No one seems to know who he is, he has no ID, and there's not a mark on him. If that isn't bad enough, a prospective new client seems to have had one Botox injection too many, his ex-wife wants to take his daughter off to Australia for a year; and someone's leaving mutilated dolls on his front step. And, of course, he's in lust again. No wonder he's feeling a little overexposed.
Thomas McCall thought his busy life couldn't get any more complicated. Until Carla, his former lover, turns up and asks him to hide her for a few days. McCall reluctantly agrees, but Carla never turns up at the hideaway. Her new boyfriend, Vince, is frantic. Why has Carla run away? What will Vince do to her if he finds her? And why, against all sense, does McCall start searching for her?
