THE BLACKBIRD PAPERS

Professor Wilson Bledsoe, an African-American biologist who teaches at Dartmouth College, is on his way home from a party celebrating his receipt of an international prize when he is abducted and brutally killed. The crime appears to have been committed by white supremacists. But when Professor Bledsoe's brother Sterling, an FBI agent, arrives on the scene, new and even more sinister motives begin coming to light. THE BLACKBIRD PAPERS is an excellent first novel by a young physician and medical journalist. Unfortunately, actor Brent Jennings renders the recording of this Ivy League thriller in a way that is more Harlem than Dartmouth. Jennings lacks the professorial tone of Smith's novel, which is well delivered in Smith's own narration of the abridged adaptation. S.E.S. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/ MAR 05]