Maverick Falconer is just starting middle school and he wishes he were a hero like his father because maybe then he could deal with his mother's drinking and series of abusive boyfriends, not to mention the kids who bully him in middle school (pretty much the same ones who bullied him in elementary school)--but as the year passes he begins to realize that other kids have problems too, and maybe if they can all survive sixth-grade things will get better....

Bored by the lack of crime in Quietville lately, Jimmy's vampire dog, Abby, has chewed up his mother's entire shoe collection, and so his parents have insisted in enrolling Abby in obedience training, and the longer it goes on the more "normal" (and boring) she becomes--but when mysterious things start happening to Jimmy's lacrosse team, he and his friends (the Crimebiters) realize they need to get Abby back to her crime fighting ways.