When street thugs bent on vigilante justice, a city's privileged elite and an eclectic cast of newspaper characters are stirred into the same pot, it's sure to boil. Add a fetching cocktail waitress and you have a truly explosive concoction. In the mid-1980s, when the daily paper was still the lifeblood of a city, the people of Newcastle followed the resulting drama of thugs, patricians and ink-stained wretches on the pages of The Chronicle. Tucker Wattson, the editor, is the center of the action as it moves from the newsroom of a metropolitan daily paper to a roadside honky-tonk to the venerable halls of Newcastle's exclusive Blackthorn Club.