Ian Smith’s freshman thriller made me sit down and take notice. It is a cover-to-cover read. Professor Wilson Bledsoe is murdered on his way home from a Dartmouth party. A new protagonist is introduced to the ranks of thriller fiction. Sterling Bledsoe has spent his life playing catch up to his older brother and now the only thing left to do for him is to catch his murderers. A seemingly open and shut case soon becomes much more. This reader was drawn in by the plot. Sterling decides that his late sibling’s work must lie at the heart of this horrific crime. Why are blackbirds dying in the woods of the Vermont/New Hampshire ? What fascinated Wilson about these deaths? Were they worth killing one of the US’s most prominent scientists for? Smith hooked me fast and kept me reading. I cannot wait to hear from Sterling again.

Ruth Jordan