Author Description

<p>An unpopular white professor of English at a multi-ethnic urban university is garroted in his office; at the same time, a gay white man seeking an Hispanic student, a former lover, is stabbed in the parking lot. Eugene Gates, African-American professor English, comes across the body in the office. Seeing a racially inflammatory note nearby, he snatches it up on impulse, therby removing the seeming evidence that a black man killed a white man. Or was the professor killed because he'd just purchased some letters proving that the original founder of the Black Muslims, a Detroit man named W.D. Fard-who had mysteriously disappeared in the 1930's-had actually gone to Ethiopia and joined the Black Hebrews instead? Or was he killed because his current boyfriend was the former student of an overly protective school teacher, who deplored the older man's presumed exploitation of the younger man? Or was someone simply nursing a personal hurt? Or did the garroting come immediately after the stabbing, once the attacker realized he'd got the wrong man? Or was it the case of a double gay-bashing? Eugene, feeling guilty for taking the letter and thus obstructing justice, follows multiple clues and resolves the mysteries.