The Space Coast Tatler is the story of two of the last of the great, intrepid
journalists colliding with a domestic terrorism plot.
Small-town editor-publisher Mac MacGregor runs a defiant, little, weekly, tabloid newspaper on Florida’s Space Coast, full of crime news, entertainment news, and beach babes.
His new crime reporter, overly-righteous Stevie Guthrie, took the job because he figured Mac’s feisty little rag just might offer a journalism apprenticeship like no other.
Mac assigns Guthrie to a cold story: the Tin Roof Tavern massacre. That late- night slaughter of six people in a roadhouse bar remains unsolved and has been Mac’s obsession for four years.
As Guthrie digs, and as other events occur and domino, the backstory of the massacre emerges.
Nutcase billionaire Sullivan Walters, who controlled vast constellations of communications satellites, had hatched a plot to cement domination of satellite communications capabilities. He wanted to cripple the space launch industry by blowing up Kennedy Space Center launch complexes.
Walters had arranged for the theft of U-233—a once promising nuclear fuel that the U.S. had abandoned in the 1960s—from almost forgotten stockpiles at the Savannah River National Laboratory. He then arranged for the material’s transport, by fishing boat, to the Space Coast. Yet the fisherman hired to ship the U-233, Del Jackson, not knowing what it was, hid the stash in a swamp and demanded more money. Walters sent a local gang of thugs, led by Wedge Wheeler, to get it back. They killed him trying to get him to talk. So then they killed all the witnesses, thus perpetrating what became known as the Tin Roof Tavern massacre.
Guthrie starts digging just as the terrorism plot becomes active again. Bank branch officer Charlie Paisley stumbles onto Jackson’s hidden stash. He stores the odd metal slugs in a bank safe deposit box while he researches what they might be. His internet inquires reach Walters, who then sends Wedge to get Paisley.
Meanwhile, with help from his new friends—underemployed rocket scientist Marvin Davies and kleptomaniac ghost whisperer Sally Malone, and with an assist from the ghost of a murdered witnesses—Guthrie finds evidence of the U-233 inside the abandoned Tin Roof Tavern building.
Soon enough, Guthrie and Wedge cross paths and pursue each other. The FBI and local law enforcement also are in the hunt. Mac’s obsession, Guthrie’s ambition, Wedge’s desperation, and the FBI’s alarm drive them all toward a showdown.
Wedge traps Guthrie, Marvin, and Sally inside the tavern and sets it ablaze. Mac, deputies, the FBI, and firefighters arrive in time to rescue Guthrie and his friends, secure the U-233, and kill or arrest most of the gang.
Walters arrives just in time to also be arrested.
Guthrie and Mac publish their story. This quirky, little, tabloid rag scoops the world with an explosive, shocking story of a crazy domestic terrorism plot while revealing the truth about the mysterious Tin Roof Tavern massacre.