First Rays

In following up a front page story, "BOAT-TO-BRIDGE BOMB OUR 9/11 says visiting expert", in the Harbour City Daily, journalist Ray Dunn — whose column, First Rays, is about "what happens downtown between dawn and gridlock" — gets more than he has bargained for. His slow awakening that his misfortunes are a deliberate attempt by home-grown jihadists to remove him from his beat to clear them to mount their attack on the biggest cruise ship ever to sail under the Harbour Bridge only leads to his alienation from everyone around him — including a lovely dawn skinny-dipping exchange student from Finland and his boss's wife — convincing them that he is paranoid. After being fired, only his Gran, a police bomb dog named Smuts, and a surly ex-Naval Scot believe in him — helping him avert a potential 5000-victim disaster in "his town", and reveal the surprise terrorist mastermind.