The Blackbird Papers Ian Smith ISBN: 0767920449 Format: Paperback, 336pp Pub. Date: June 2005 Publisher: Broadway Books List Price: $14.00
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FROM THE PUBLISHER

A rainy night . . . A stranded motorist . . . A Good Samaritan passerby ... a
Nobel Prize-winning professor . . . The setup for a shocking murder designed
to cover up an even more sinister crime . . .

The Blackbird Papers marks the debut of Ian Smith, a major new talent in
crime fiction, and of Sterling Bledsoe, his smart and occasionally combative
sleuth.

World-renowned Dartmouth professor Wilson Bledsoe is returning from a party
celebrating his latest honor when he encounters a broken-down pickup on the
secluded country road to his home. The next day, the discovery of his body
with a vicious racist epithet carved into his chest leads to the quick arrest
of two loathsome white supremacists. The local authorities seem ready to
accept the case at face value as a racial hate crime. But the murdered
professor's brother, FBI agent Sterling Bledsoe, has inserted himself into
the investigation and isn't ready to buy into this pat solution. A look
around his brother's lab and brief interviews with his students and
colleagues pique Sterling's curiosity about Wilson's pet project: a nearly
completed paper on the mysterious deaths of hundreds of local blackbirds.

Fast-paced and cleverly constructed, The Blackbird Papers introduces a major
new talent in mystery and crime fiction.