Taylor Coleridge is covering Operation Sail. A police reporter, he'd rather do real stories, and NYC has plenty in July 1976. When a dead housewife is fished out of the harbor wearing bricks of heroin, Taylor believes he's stumbled upon a war between drug cartels. Flanked by his ex-cop girlfriend, he pursues his big story but sees it grow more twisted and deadly by the hour.

It's 1975, and Pres. Ford refuses to bail out NYC, but newsman Coleridge Taylor has other worries. He needs his next scoop. He thinks he's found it when a mugging leaves a punk and a cop dead. Only the punk was a good kid, and the NYPD thinks Officer Samantha Callahan abandoned her partner. Taylor falls for Samantha. A bad move. Her story has a mighty undertow, and Taylor is in over his head.

A young woman is gunned down on the same night Son of Sam strikes elsewhere in Queens. The New York press and police drop everything to pursue the psycho killer, leaving Coleridge Taylor to tell Martha's story. As he closes in on the mystery, a blackout sets off an orgy of looting and arson. Can Taylor stay alive until the lights come on?

In 1975, newsman Coleridge Taylor roams New York's ERs looking for the story that will revive his faltering career. While investigating the death of a society kid up to no good, he tries to protect a homeless man on the hit list of three goons and soon finds his own life in danger. If he doesn't wrap this story up soon, he'll be back on the obits page—as a headline, not a byline.