'When the sun lowers itself into the bay and leaves the sky over St Kilda a dark crimson, it's beautiful and threatening at the same time. But the tourists don't see it that way. They only see the pretty colours and the calm water, the restaurants and the palm trees. They don't see the stabbings and the fights, the brawls and the rapes...'

When a young runaway is found dead in St Kilda one morning, a syringe hanging out of his arm, no one is terribly shocked. Aknown junkie, the kid's criminal record is as long as the Scenic Railway. Even local detective Rubens McCauley is quick to conclude that Dallas Boyd died of an accidental overdose.

But anomalies in the boy's death - and the haunting memory of a childhood friend - continues to nag at McCauley. Unable to shake his unease, he revives the case, only to find himself up against a secret network of paedophiles, drug dealers and underage prostitutes.

Forced to look evil in the eye, McCauley must conquer his own demons as he battles to find justice for a boy he never met but has come to know intimately in death.