Abridged. When Professor Wilson Bledsoe is brutally murdered, two loathsome white supremacists seem like the obvious culprits. But Bledsoe's younger brother Sterling, an FBI agent in New York, has other ideas. A look around Wilson's lab and interviews with his students, his fellow professors, and the college's president pique Sterling's curiosity about Wilson's nearly-completed project on the mysterious death of hundreds of local blackbirds. But whena tape supposedly incriminating Sterling is sent to the FBI, Sterling becomes a man on the run. Determined to clear his name and bring his brother's murderer to justice,Sterling finds that his brother's project has far-reachingand sinister implications that tie together his brother's college, big-money interests in the Midwest, and some veryinfluential people at the highest levels of government.