Description

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.

About the Author

Ian Smith, M.D., has been an award-winning medical correspondent for NBC News and a contributor to the Today show.  He is a medical columnist for Men's Health magazine and a commentator for NPR’s Tavis Smiley show and for the nationally syndicated TV talk show The View.  He lives in New York City.

Praise for The Blackbird Papers…

“Ian Smith’s debut novel, The Blackbird Papers, is exceptional on all levels: the characters and setting are fresh, the plot is riveting, and you feel like you are in totally new territory. Take note of a career about to soar.”—Harlan Coben, author of No Second Chance