Set in the central coast of California, Moratorium tells the tale  of the backroom deals and political intrigue involved in the high stakes game of striking oil.

The son of California’s richest oil magnate, Mike Tanner, washes up dead on the shores of Rincon Beach.  

When his body is found by his sister, Kelsey and world renown surfer, Dana Mathers, they meet a mysterious girl, who denies any knowledge of Mike Tanner’s death and then disappears.

Senior Detective Sergeant Cyrus Fleming takes charge of the murder investigation.

With the humiliating loss of a famous celebrity case still fresh in his mind, he goes on a mission to recover the reputation of the Santa Barbara Police Department.

Fleming arrests Dana for murder.

Dana tells the cynical Fleming he is being framed, but the detective is resolute. He is going to nail the famous Dana Mathers with a case so solid, even a star-struck jury of Santa Barbarans will have to convict him.

And then in an instant everything changes...

Either he restores his career and the reputation of his department, or he believes the man who saved his life and rescues him from life in prison.  

His investigation leads him to places he doesn’t want to go and to suspects far more dangerous and powerful than a hometown surf hero.

This time, Moon wants to create the “Mother of All Oil Spills” to stop the oil companies. Enter Maverick Duncan, a Russo-Asian and spy for the Chinese Ministry of Intelligence.

He and the wily Bao Yang, bitter representative of the Chinese National Oil Company whose incompetence caused China to lose it’s bid to buy out UNOCAL, the tenth largest oil company in the world, finance Moon’s scheme for their own purposes.