Twelve-year-old Nickel has been on his own ever since he escaped from foster care two years ago. Now he lives alone, working as a private investigator and trying to keep social services from noticing he doesn't have parents. Most of the plot concerns the search for missing eleven-year-old Shelby Cross, whose fourteen-year-old sister Arrow hires Nickel to look for her.
Nickel Plated contains examples of:
- Bedroom Adultery Scene: Mikey, one of Nickel's old clients, paid him to help him with a divorce. He slashed his wife's lover's tires so Mikey could catch them in the act.
- Blackmail: Nickel goes onto chat rooms full of pedophiles, tricks them into talking about all the things they want to do to him, and then threatens to send the transcripts to their families if they don't pay him thousands of dollars. Then he sends the transcripts to the FBI anyway.
- Catfishing: Nickel is hired by a woman named Veronica Rogers so he can find out what kind of trouble her teenage son Jeff has been getting into. Nickel goes on Facebook as eighteen-year-old Amber Tease and flirts with Jeff to learn about his activities.
- Disappeared Dad: After Shelby's disappearance, Arrow's parents get in a screaming fight during which her mom admits that she only had kids in order to trap him so she could spend his money. Her dad packs a bag and moves in with his girlfriend.
- Fate Worse than Death: Nickel plans to kill himself if he's ever caught rather than go back to foster care.
- Foster Kid: Nickel lived between the ages of four and eight with a detective who was the only good parental figure he ever had. After the detective was murdered, Nickel lived in a long series of foster homes. His last placement was with a couple who were forcing their two kids to star in child pornography, and intended to do the same to him. It's implied that Nickel escaped by setting a House Fire that killed the parents.
- Frame-Up: Someone plants child porn and one of Shelby's shoes in her father's possession so the police will think he killed her.
- Minor Living Alone: Nickel lives in an empty two-bedroom house, which he obtained by paying a homeless guy to sign the lease. He makes enough money to survive by selling marijuana to high schoolers, blackmailing pedophiles, and working as a Kid Detective.
- Oral Fixation: Nickel chews on matchsticks.
- Police Are Useless: The police fail to make any progress on the search for Shelby. When Nickel finds evidence they missed, cops fill the area with footprints, destroying any other evidence that might have been there.
- The Runaway: Nickel first ran away from foster care when he was eight. That time he was caught and returned.
- Secret Room: A seemingly normal house in a poor neighborhood contains a secret door at the back of the pantry that opens into the basement where Shelby is being held.
- Skipping School: Arrow cuts school and goes with Nickel to the neighborhood where he thinks Shelby is so she can spy on the suspects and tell him when they're gone.
- What a Piece of Junk: Nickel's bicycle cost five thousand dollars, but he fine-tuned it to look cheap.
- Wild Teen Party: Nickel finds that Jeff Rogers has been going to wild teen parties and getting in fistfights with other boys while the guests cheer them on. He arranges for Jeff to take martial arts lessons so he can use his talents for something productive.
