CANR
WORK TITLE: Mississippi Blood
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1961
WEBSITE: http://www.gregiles.com/
CITY: Natchez
STATE: MS
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
LAST VOLUME: LRC 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/greg-iles-concludes-his-spectacular-natchez-burning-trilogy/2017/03/22/4110f4fe-0f22-11e7-9d5a-a83e627dc120_story.html?utm_term=.81d67414b209
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born August 10, 1960, in Stuttgart, West Germany (now Germany); married; wife is a dentist; children: two.
EDUCATION:University of Mississippi, earned degree, 1983.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Former member of the rock bands Frankly Scarlet and The Rock Bottom Remainders.
AVOCATIONS:Music, song writing.
AWARDS:Mississippi Author’s Award for Fiction, for Black Cross.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Greg Iles is a writer of mystery and suspense novels who has mined his childhood in Germany, where he grew up as the son of a U.S. embassy official, to find inspiration for some of his works. Iles’s earliest novels feature latter-day Nazis and Cold War-era international intrigue, and other works have included serial killers, kidnappers, and psychopaths. All of his works are noted for their intricate plotting, quick pace, and surprising endings. Booklist contributor Vanessa Bush echoed the sentiments of many critics with regard to Iles’s books when she called his 24 Hours “a fast-paced, gripping novel of suspense and action.” A longtime resident of Mississippi, Iles has also utilized the Deep South as a setting for many of his books, and many critics have noted elements of the southern gothic style in his writing.
Iles’s first novel, Spandau Phoenix, was a New York Times best seller. It tells of a young German police sergeant’s discovery of some yellowed old documents uncovered during the demolition of Spandau prison. In reality, the prison had housed Rudolph Hess, the infamous Nazi-era war criminal, who died in 1987. In Iles’s tale, the real Hess remained free, carrying on Hitler’s legacy while hiding in South Africa; a highly trained double was imprisoned in his place. The found papers reveal a plot dating back to 1941 but having modern-day ramifications, including the possible eradication of Israel by a neo-Nazi brotherhood. The sergeant’s wife, along with a historian, translate the mysterious papers and embark on a mission to thwart the Nazi plot. “Iles does a credible job of managing his large cast of characters and maintaining suspense,” Mary Ellen Quinn wrote in a Booklist review of Spandau Phoenix. Library Journal contributor V. Louise Saylor, however, remarked that the novel “loses its impact long before the end of the drawn-out plot.” Although finding fault with the story’s “stock characters and melodramatic plot,” a reviewer for Publishers Weekly called this debut novel “clearly written, with some entertaining speculation.”
A contributor to Kirkus Reviews judged Iles’s second best seller, Black Cross, to be “a swift historical thriller of such brutal accomplishment that it vaporizes almost every cliché about the limits of the genre.” Set during World War II, this novel revolves around a secret Allied mission to infiltrate a Nazi concentration camp, where the Reich is developing poison gases in a secret lab. The two men assigned to infiltrate the camp are to release a British poison gas, code-named “Black Cross,” which is available to the Allies in only a limited amount. The action is devised as a warning to the Nazis to stop their research and to prevent them from ever using their own supply of nerve gases against Allied troops. Because the raid is likely to kill everyone in the camp, including the prisoners and the British agents, the operatives modify the mission’s original strategy—with harrowing results.
Praising Black Cross as “full of runaway-train excitement,” the Kirkus Reviews contributor regarded it as “good enough to read twice.” A Publishers Weekly writer concluded that Black Cross is “an unusually resonant, gripping thriller” deserving a place on any “recommended reading list of thrillers.” John F. Harvey, writing in Armchair Detective, deemed the plot “more complex than those of most thrillers. … The novel makes the reader feel that he/she has been through a significant, emotionally rending and bitterly educational experience.” Harvey added: “The work poses several life vs. death philosophical questions and discusses them in the heat of extreme wartime conditions.” Emily Melton called the author and the story “remarkable” in a Booklist review. “This stunning, horrifying, mesmerizing novel will keep readers transfixed from beginning to end,” she maintained.
Other thrillers by Iles include The Footprints of God and Blood Memory. In the former, the author presents David Tennant, a government scientist working on an intelligent machine. When one of his colleagues dies, Tennant suspects foul play and thinks he may be next. He decides to run, with the help of his psychiatrist. Edward Karam, writing in People, commented that the author “addresses serious issues in popular form, and the pursuits are plenty hot.”
Iles tells the story of Dr. Catherine (Cat) Ferry in his thriller Blood Memory. Cat is an alcoholic forensic odontologist who discovers that she is pregnant by her married boyfriend, a cop. Cat also finds herself working on a series of murder cases in which the murderer bites and chews the victims after they are dead. There is something about this case, however, that sends Cat back home to Natchez with a sense that these murders are connected to the shooting death of her father when she was eight years old. Calling the novel “as southern Gothic as it gets,” a Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote: “It’s clearly Cat’s meow.”
True Evil features Natchez doctor Chris Shepard, who is visited by FBI agents who inform him that a local divorce lawyer has a number of clients whose spouses have recently died under suspicious circumstances. They also tell him that his wife was recently observed visiting the lawyer. Agent Alex Morse, who recently escaped death herself, asks Chris, who now must consider that his wife is planning his murder, to help her catch the killer. David Pitt wrote of this fast-paced story in Booklist: “Before you know it, you’ve reached the last page, and you’re all out of breath—but you’ve had one hell of a ride.”
Third Degree opens with Laura Shields, mother of two, discovering that she is pregnant. The father could be Danny, whom she loves, and who is the father of one of her special ed students. Or it could be her husband, Warren, a physician who learns of her infidelity, but who himself is deeply involved in a deception of another kind. Warren is in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service because of medical fraud cases involving his partner, Kyle Auster. Warren demands to know the name of Laura’s lover and tries to find it in a search of her computer. Cracking under these pressures, he takes his wife and children hostage in a standoff with police. The story includes subplots and secondary characters, many of whom at first seem peripheral but are actually integral to the plot. A Publishers Weekly contributor concluded that “Iles avoids turning Warren into a cliched bad guy by making his descent into madness understandable.”
Iles’s third novel, Mortal Fear, is about the race to find a serial killer who stalks female victims on the Internet. The systems operator for an erotic online service becomes a suspect in the murders of subscribers around the country, then goes online himself, posing as a woman and potential victim in order to trap the real murderer. A contributor to the New York Times Book Review called Mortal Fear “more complicated than it needs to be,” but labeled the technology involved in the computer chase “fascinating.” “Iles scores high with this psychological thriller,” Lori Dunn wrote in Library Journal, “easily accessible even to the computer-semiliterate.” A reviewer for Publishers Weekly concluded: “Iles uses rich first-person narration and clever plotting to tell a sizzler of a thriller.”
In 24 Hours, the best-laid plans of kidnappers Joe and his wife, Cheryl, go awry when they kidnap Abby, the diabetic five-year-old daughter of Dr. William Jennings and his wife, Karen. The kidnappers’ goal is to receive ransom money and release the child within twenty-four hours, before federal authorities can investigate the crime—a scenario they have successfully carried out numerous times in the past. But Karen, who is being held hostage by Joe’s lumbering and mentally incompetent cousin, and William, who is intercepted at a medical convention by the alluring Cheryl, fight back to save their daughter, who may die if she does not receive her daily insulin injection. As in other Iles stories, the FBI proves to be of little use, and William and Karen must outsmart the criminals on their own. Kilpatrick praised the book as a “thriller that will mesmerize to the bitter end.” A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that 24 Hours is a “brilliantly plotted tale [that] walks the razor’s edge between cinematic excess and bone-chilling suspense.”
Dead Sleep features Jordan Glass, an award-winning, New Orleans-based photojournalist who is traumatized by the disappearance of her twin sister. While on a vacation in Hong Kong, Jordan discovers a painting of her sister in a museum exhibition devoted to the works of an anonymous artist. The startling paintings all depict sleeping (or possibly dead) nude women; all the women are known to be missing. Shocked, Jordan must confront secrets from her past as she recognizes her sister may have been the victim of a serial killer. The trail leads to an eccentric art professor at Tulane University, a Vietnam-based French art collector, and the possibility that Jordan’s father, a famous photographer himself, may not have been killed in Cambodia as she has long believed. The characters Daniel Baxter and Dr. Lenz from Mortal Fear figure into the plot as well. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly called Iles a writer with “incredible range,” and Dead Sleep a book with a “double surprise ending” and a “perfect final payoff.” The book proved to transcend the genre of the murder mystery as well. Booklist critic Stephanie Zvirin called the work “atmospheric, sexy, and provocative in its depiction of the duality of human nature.”
In Sleep No More, Iles tells the story of John Waters, a geologist in Natchez who suddenly finds himself attracted to a younger woman who knows everything about an affair he had years ago with a murdered woman. When this new woman is murdered as well, John begins to suspect that someone, possibly even his wife, may be out to ruin his life. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that the author’s “fans will certainly enjoy the way he once again brings to piquant life his home turf—Natchez and the Mississippi Delta—and creates a character with an actual job.”
Iles began a series set in Natchez, Mississippi, with The Quiet Game, in which the featured protagonist, Penn Cage, an attorney-turned-author as well as a recent widower, returns to his hometown from Houston and begins an investigation into a thirty-year-old murder case with racial overtones. Penn has personal reasons for conducting his investigation; he suspects the culprit is a former judge who is blackmailing his father in an attempt to ruin his medical practice. The small southern town does not take kindly to Penn’s plans to dig into the past and upset its precarious social order. The FBI proves to be a hindrance as well, and soon Penn’s family is endangered. Urged on by the family of the murdered man, Penn’s quest becomes an obsession as he discovers cover-ups and lies that stretch all the way to J. Edgar Hoover. Booklist critic Brad Hooper praised The Quiet Game as a “deliciously complicated tale,” and Library Journal contributor Thomas L. Kilpatrick called the book a “Southern superthriller that rivals John Grisham’s best.”
Penn returns in Turning Angel to defend his best friend, married Dr. Drew Elliot, who Penn has learned was the secret lover of Kate Townsend, a seventeen-year-old high school senior who was found raped and murdered. While Penn is furious with Drew, he represents him in court and is determined to find the real killer. This task is made even more difficult when a politically ambitious district attorney turns up evidence against Drew. Then other deaths occur, and other secrets about local high school students surface. Iles truthfully portrays Natchez as it exists today, with all its problems, economic as well as drug-and race-related. “The job of great fiction is to entertain, elucidate and educate while keeping readers nailed to their chairs,” wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer, who added that Turning Angel “this does all of that brilliantly.”
Successful lawyer and author Penn is now the mayor of Natchez in The Devil’s Punchbowl, a story of good versus evil. As the story opens, Penn is preparing to take part in a three-day balloon festival, but on the eve of the annual event, he is sought out by an old friend with a horrific tale to tell. Tim Jessup, a blackjack dealer on the casino riverboat Magnolia Queen, tells Penn of underage prostitution, drugs, money laundering, and dogfighting that have become part of the gambling culture and are used to lure in high rollers, including rap artists, NFL players, and Chinese billionaires. The second meeting they had planned never takes place when Tim is tortured and murdered while on his way to meet Penn in a cemetery overlooking the Mississippi where the riverboat is moored.
When Penn gets involved, his home is visited by thug Seamus Quinn and Quinn’s boss, casino owner Jonathan Sands, whose English accent is a cover for his rough, working-class Irish manner of speaking. They arrived armed with weapons and a Bully Kutta, a breed of mastiff-like Pakistani dog known for its strength, size, and ferocity. They tell Penn that unless he follows their orders, his daughter and friends will be killed. Penn puts together a team that includes a former Texas Ranger and Daniel Kelly of the Blackhawk security firm, who quickly returns from Afghanistan to work with him. Penn is concerned about how far he is willing to go to protect those he loves.
Penn’s former lover, journalist Caitlin Masters, who has returned to Natchez, is kidnapped by the sadistic Sands and Quinn, and Penn and his men must find and rescue her. Sands is being protected by a Justice Department attorney in return for his help in a sting operation set up to implicate a Chinese criminal. The room deep within the bowels of the ship that is used for torture and sexual abuse is called the “Devil’s Punchbowl.”
Patrick Anderson reviewed The Devil’s Punchbowl for Washington Post Book World Online, noting: “Some readers may toss the novel aside because of its scenes of horrific violence. Others will tolerate the violence because Iles is a talented writer who puts the horror in a believable context.” Reviewing the novel in the Dallas Morning News, Joy Tipping noted the violence of the dogfight scenes and the treatment of both animals and people that she felt are necessary to the plot. Tipping wrote: “As with his other books, Iles builds the story slowly and deliberately, dropping hints like candy on a witch’s trail that leads straight into hell.” Pitt wrote in Booklist that Iles “is an author who just keeps getting better. That’s saying something for somebody who is already head and shoulders above most of his competitors.”
Iles disappeared from the public eye for a time as he recovered from near-fatal injuries he suffered in a serious car accident in 2011. He returned with the much anticipated novel Natchez Burning, which continues the “Penn Cage” series and is the first volume in a planned trilogy about race relations in the American South. Before the main narrative gets under way, Iles provides a historical prologue, which narrates events that set in motion virtually all that follows. In 1968 the Double Eagles, a violent splinter group of the Ku Klux Klan, murder two black civil rights activists, Luther Davis and Jimmy Revels, and gang-rape Revels’s sister, Viola. The novel then jumps ahead to 2005, shortly after the events of The Devil’s Punchbowl. Penn, motivated by a deep desire to restore the struggling city of Natchez, has run successfully for mayor. Viola, who has since moved to Detroit, is stricken with cancer and is returning to Natchez to die, which she does under questionable circumstances: Her son, Lincoln, believes that she was the victim of a mercy killing at the hands of Penn’s father, Dr. Tom Cage, a revered physician referred to admiringly by one of the characters as “Atticus Finch with a stethoscope” (a reference to the lead character in the classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird). The suspicion gains some credibility because of the widespread belief that years before the elder Cage and Viola, an African American nurse who frequently worked with Tom, had been lovers. Tom refuses to defend himself, leading Penn to launch his own investigation, which in turn leads to the revelation of hidden secrets from forty years earlier. Among those who help him is his fiancée, Caitlin Master, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist looking for a breaking story, putting her in conflict with Penn and his personal agenda. Also helping is Henry Sexton, a small-town reporter who has devoted much of his career to gathering evidence about unsolved crimes from the civil rights era in a region where racial divisions have long run deep. His discoveries suggest that the Double Eagles, financed by a sadistic multimillionaire, have targeted the nation’s highest ranking leaders and may be connected to some of the political assassinations of the 1960s. He finds a source who is willing to talk but who is killed before he can tell what he knows.
Reviewers responded to Natchez Burning with unanimous approval. Calling the novel “superlative,” a Publishers Weekly reviewer remarked that “Iles’s deftly plotted fourth Penn Cage novel doesn’t flag for a moment.” Joy Gunn, in a review for Library Journal, called the novel “an absorbing and electrifying tale that thriller fans will be sure to devour.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor characterized the novel as “a searing tale of racial hatreds and redemption in the modern South, courtesy of Southern storyteller extraordinaire Iles.” The reviewer concluded by calling Natchez Burning a “memorable, harrowing tale” and remarking that “Iles is a master of regional literature, though he’s dealing with universals here, one being our endless thirst to right wrongs.”
Liz Braun, writing in the Toronto Sun, called the novel “riveting” and described it as a “gripping narrative about power, ambition, illicit relationships and corruption in high places.” A Wall Street Journal contributor found the novel to be “above all a well-made thriller” and asserted that Iles “delivers a whopping tale, filled with enough cliff-hanging crises for an old summer-long movie-serial.” Finally, in the Washington Post Book World, Bill Sheehan, calling the novel “impassioned,” commented that as the first installment in a planned trilogy, it “is an impressive beginning to what could prove to be an epic exploration of the nation’s secrets and hidden sins.” Sheehan concluded by contending that the novel “obliterates the artificial distinction between genre and literary fiction with passion, grace and considerable style.”
In 2015 Iles published the novel The Bone Tree. Penn Cage finds that his father is on the run from murder charges, his fiancé is recovering from a house fire that nearly killed her, and he is at a loss for who to trust in his life. As Cage attempts to sort out his life, he comes into a set of potentially connected murder involving John F. and Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. and his father’s involvement with them.
Writing in the Washington Post Book World, Bill Sheehan commented that the novel “is a hugely elaborate illustration of a famous line by William Faulkner: ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ Iles puts his own distinctive stamp on that Faulknerian theme, and the result is a very American epic-in-progress that leaves us waiting, none too patiently, for whatever revelations are still to come.” Reviewing the novel in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Margie Romero stated: “As written by Mr. Iles, Caitlin is both exciting and flawed. She’s engaged to Penn, but her real passion is for an exclusive story. She wants justice, but she also longs to win prizes and do the talk show circuit. Her quest to find the bone tree is some of Mr. Iles’ most atmospheric writing.” In a review in Library Journal, Joy Gunn insisted that the author “superbly blends past and present in his swift and riveting story line.” Booklist contributor Pitt mentioned that “there will be much interest in this title and a parallel bump in demand for Natchez Burning, as readers play catch-up.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews pointed out that “fans will find that the pace has picked up a touch from the first volume—and that’s a good thing.”
Iles published the novel Mississippi Blood in 2017. Penn finds that his life continues to be in a constant state of upheaval. His father is in jail for allegedly murdering his former lover. Yet he keeps tight-lipped about a secret that would shake the foundations of town. With the Double Eagles under new leadership, their commitment to taking Penn down remains unwavering. Meanwhile, Penn teams up with author Serenity Butler to collaborate on a book about Penn’s father’s case and also delving into his own family history and the conflict with the Double Eagles.
A contributor to Publishers Weekly insisted that “the trial scenes are among the most exciting ever written in the genre.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor found the novel to be “a boisterous, spills-and-chills entertainment from start to finish.” Booklist contributor David Pitt predicted that the series “is destined to become a classic of literary crime fiction.” In a review in Library Journal, Joy Gunn observed that Iles’s “heart-racing, enthralling thriller brings to the forefront the racial divisiveness that still plagues this country.” Writing in the Washington Post Book World, Bill Sheehan reasoned that “as the Cage family endures its own trial by fire, Iles shows us both the weaknesses and strength of people tested by extreme circumstances and by secrets and lies that have festered for too long. In successfully illuminating both the inner life of a family in peril and ‘the troubled borderland between black and white,’ he has created something memorable and true.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Armchair Detective, March 22, 1995, John F. Harvey, review of Black Cross, p. 220.
AudioFile, August 1, 2006, Michael J. Bandler, “Talking with Greg Iles,” p. 45.
Booklist, May 1, 1993, Mary Ellen Quinn, review of Spandau Phoenix, p. 1569; November 1, 1994, Emily Melton, review of Black Cross, p. 459; July, 1999, Brad Hooper, review of The Quiet Game, p. 1894; July, 2000, Vanessa Bush, review of 24 Hours, p. 1974; June 1, 2001, Stephanie Zvirin, review of Dead Sleep, p. 1852; September 1, 2001, Ted Hipple, review of The Quiet Game, p. 126; October 15, 2005, David Pitt, review of Turning Angel, p. 4; December 15, 2006, David Pitt, review of True Evil, p. 5; November 1, 2007, David Pitt, review of Third Degree, p. 6; July 1, 2009, David Pitt, review of The Devil’s Punchbowl, p. 36; February 15, 2015, David Pitt, review of The Bone Tree, p. 34; January 1, 2017, David Pitt, review of Mississippi Blood, p. 46.
Christian Science Monitor, April 21, 2015, Erik Spanberg, “‘Natchez Burning’ Author Greg Iles Discusses ‘The Bone Tree.’”
Dallas Morning News, July 19, 2009, Joy Tipping, review of The Devil’s Punchbowl.
Entertainment Weekly, August 15, 2003, Wook Kim, review of The Footprints of God, p. 83; December 1, 2006, Tina Jordan, review of True Evil, p. 89.
Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 1994, review of Black Cross, p. 1431; February 1, 2005, review of Blood Memory, p. 139; June 15, 2009, review of The Devil’s Punchbowl; February 15, 2014, review of Natchez Burning; February 15, 2015, review of The Bone Tree; January 15, 2017, review of Mississippi Blood.
Library Journal, April 15, 1993, V. Louise Saylor, review of Spandau Phoenix, p. 126; January, 1997, Lori Dunn, review of Mortal Fear, p. 146; August, 1999, Thomas L. Kilpatrick, review of The Quiet Game, p. 140; August, 2000, Thomas L. Kilpatrick, review of 24 Hours, p. 157; May 15, 2001, Michael Adams, review of The Quiet Game, p. 18; July, 2001, Jane Jorgenson, review of Dead Sleep, p. 123; February 15, 2005, Jeff Ayers, review of Blood Memory, p. 119; November 15, 2005, Thomas L. Kilpatrick, review of Turning Angel, p. 61; July 1, 2009, Thomas L. Kilpatrick, review of The Devil’s Punchbowl, p. 84; February 15, 2014, Joy Gunn, review of Natchez Burning, p. 97; April 15, 2015, Joy Gunn, review of The Bone Tree, p. 76; December 1, 2017, Joy Gunn, review of Mississippi Blood, p. 84.
New York Times Book Review, February 16, 1997, review of Mortal Fear, p. 28.
People, September 22, 2003, Edward Karam, review of The Footprints of God, p. 58.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 7, 2015, Margie Romero, review of The Bone Tree.
Publishers Weekly, March 15, 1993, review of Spandau Phoenix, p. 67; October 9, 1995, review of Black Cross, p. 83; December 9, 1996, review of Mortal Fear, p. 59; July 5, 1999, review of The Quiet Game, p. 55; July 31, 2000, review of 24 Hours, p. 71; June 11, 2001, review of Dead Sleep, p. 58; June 17, 2002, review of Sleep No More, p. 43; October 31, 2005, review of Turning Angel, p. 34; October 15, 2007, review of Third Degree, p. 41; February 10, 2014, review of Natchez Burning, p. 2; January 23, 2017, review of Mississippi Blood, p. 58.
South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL), November 28, 2007, Oline H. Cogdill, review of Third Degree.
USA Today, February 2, 2006, Carol Memmott, review of Turning Angel, p. 4D; November 15, 2007, Carol Memmott, review of Third Degree, p. 5D.
Washington Post Book World, May 11, 2015, Bill Sheehan, review of The Bone Tree.
ONLINE
Genre Go Round Reviews, http://genregoroundreviews.blogspot.com/ (October 13, 2007), Harriet Klausner, review of Third Degree.
Greg Iles Home Page, http://www.gregiles.com (August 11, 2014).
San Francisco Chronicle Online, http://www.sfgate.com/ (July 9, 2009), Jerry Harkavy, review of The Devil’s Punchbowl.
Toronto Sun, http://www.torontosun.com/ (May 30, 2014), Liz Braun, author profile and review of Natchez Burning.
Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/ (April 25, 2014), review of Natchez Burning.
Washington Post Book World Online, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ (July 6, 2009), Patrick Anderson, review of The Devil’s Punchbowl; (May 1, 2014), Bill Sheehan, review of Natchez Burning; (March 22, 2017), Bill Sheehan, review of Mississippi Blood.*
Series
World War II
1. Spandau Phoenix (1993)
2. Black Cross (1995)
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Mississippi
1. Mortal Fear (1997)
2. 24 Hours (2000)
aka Trapped
3. Dead Sleep (2001)
4. Sleep No More (2002)
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Penn Cage
1. The Quiet Game (1999)
2. Turning Angel (2005)
3. The Devil's Punchbowl (2008)
3.5. The Death Factory (2014)
4. Natchez Burning (2012)
5. The Bone Tree (2015)
6. Mississippi Blood (2017)
Natchez Burning / The Bone Tree (omnibus) (2017)
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Novels
The Footprints of God (2003)
aka Dark Matter
Blood Memory (2005)
True Evil (2006)
Third Degree (2007)
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Omnibus
The Quiet Game / 24 Hours / Dead Sleep (2003)
The Quiet Game / Turning Angel / The Devil's Punchbowl (2015)
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Mississippi Blood
264.4 (Jan. 23, 2017): p58.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* Mississippi Blood
Greg lies. Morrow, $28.99 (704p) ISBN 978-0-06-231115-3
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Both unwieldy and tightly controlled, bestseller Iles's terrific conclusion to his Natchez Burning trilogy (after 2015's The Bone Tree) is a sweeping story that remains intimate. The Double Eagles, a savage KKK splinter group, have declared a personal war on Penn Cage, a former prosecutor who's now the mayor of Natchez, Miss., necessitating 24-hour security protection for him and his family. The toxic bigotry escalates as Penn's father, Tom, once a respected physician, goes on trial for the murder of his former nurse and one-time lover, Viola Turner, an African-American who was suffering from terminal cancer. Penn teams with Serenity Butler, a famous black author who plans to write about Tom's case. Together, they look into the secrets of the Cage family, the Double Eagles, and the South. Though a side plot about J.F.K.'s assassination stretches credibility, relentless pacing keeps the story churning, with unexpected brutality erupting on nearly every page. The trial scenes are among the most exciting ever written in the genre. Eight-city author tour. Agents: Dan Conaway and Simon Lipskar, Writers House. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Mississippi Blood." Publishers Weekly, 23 Jan. 2017, p. 58. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479714166&it=r&asid=0ef455494590f8db62cfac448b3b0525. Accessed 25 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479714166
Iles, Greg: MISSISSIPPI BLOOD
(Jan. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Iles, Greg MISSISSIPPI BLOOD Morrow/HarperCollins (Adult Fiction) $28.99 3, 28 ISBN: 978-0-06-231115-3
Delta whodunit master Iles (The Bone Tree, 2015, etc.) brings his politically charged, timely trilogy of Mississippi murder and mayhem to a thunderous close.Life for Penn Cage is never a bowl of cherries. A bucket of blood, more like it. As this last installment in the Natchez Burning trilogy opens, he's in a bloodier mess than ever, depressed, full of bitter self-awareness: "When someone you love is murdered," he reflects, "you learn things about yourself you'd give a great deal not to know." Other questions loom. Why is his jailed father stubbornly clinging to a secret guaranteed to shake up otherwise sleepy Natchez? Now that the Klan-on-steroids villains have come under new management, what kind of awful mischief are they going to make for the place--and how do they figure in that secret, anyway? To begin to answer those questions, Iles swings full circle back into the territory of the first volume and its unlikely archive of once-forbidden, even now fraught interracial relationships; "anyone in possession of those ledgers," Penn reveals, "would never have to worry about money again, so valuable would they be as a blackmail tool." No, but there are plenty of other things to worry about, things that make the normally even-keeled Penn feel not so bad about shooting a bad guy in the back, "where I know his heart is pumping violently." Iles mostly sticks to the format of the hard-boiled procedural, though there's some nicely wrought courtroom drama here, too, with a none-too-subtle dig at a fellow Southern mysterian: "The why doesn't come into it. That's for John Grisham and the Law & Order writers to worry about." Speedboats, bullets, and floods of the red stuff fly and flow, wrapping up to a clean conclusion--though with the slightest hint of an out, in case Iles decides to stretch the trilogy into another book or two. Faulkner meets John D. MacDonald, and that's all to the good. A boisterous, spills-and-chills entertainment from start to finish.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Iles, Greg: MISSISSIPPI BLOOD." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA477242333&it=r&asid=ed6e30296e896bf43790e374ad47dee3. Accessed 25 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A477242333
Mississippi Blood
David Pitt
113.9-10 (Jan. 1, 2017): p46.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
* Mississippi Blood. By Greg lies. Mar. 2017. 408p. Morrow, $28.99 (9780062311153); o-book, $14.99 (9780062311191).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Iles wraps up his massively ambitious Natchez Burning trilogy with a book that is (in keeping with its predecessors) compelling, dark, surprising, and morally ambiguous. Its hero, Penn Cage, has done things that might be considered reprehensible, but in these circumstances--his father about to stand trial for a murder he might very well have committed; his fiancee having been recently murdered; and his family's lives in jeopardy--we can understand why Penn steps outside the normal boundaries of acceptable behavior in his pursuit of the truth about his father and about the Double Eagles, a white-supremacist organization with a deep connection to the history of Mississippi and to Penn's own family. Familiarity with the first two books in the trilogy, Natchez Burning (2014) and The Bone Tree (2015), isn't a requirement here--the author has devised a very clever way of bringing readers up to speed--but, even so, there are some plot threads and references to previous events that might be missed by those jumping into the story in midstream. With these three novels, lies has told an epic story that rips apart the modern history of Mississippi (he lives in Natchez himself), exposing a secret underbelly that, while fictional, feels real enough to have actually happened. This trilogy is destined to become a classic of literary crime fiction.--David Pitt
Pitt, David
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Pitt, David. "Mississippi Blood." Booklist, 1 Jan. 2017, p. 46. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479077986&it=r&asid=2a6b568e43770dccca5756e18bad66ad. Accessed 25 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479077986
Iles, Greg. Mississippi Blood
Joy Gunn
141.20 (Dec. 1, 2016): p84.
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* Iles, Greg. Mississippi Blood. Morrow. Mar. 2017.608p. ISBN 9780062311153. $28.99; ebk. ISBN 9780062311191. F
Snake Knox, the most sadistic member of the white supremacist terrorist group known as the Double Eagles, has taken the helm, and will do anything to keep the truth hidden. His all-out assault on Penn Cage and his family and friends ratchets up as the murder trial of Penn's father gets underway. Desperate to save Dr. Tom Cage from being convicted of killing his former nurse, Viola Turner, Penn and soldier-turned-author Serenity Butler race to uncover witnesses. The danger for Penn and anyone connected to him intensifies to the extreme as he battles to expose the truth of the decades of atrocities committed by Snake and the Double Eagles. Flowing throughout, the courage and bravery of those who encounter violence born of racial intolerance is continuously tested. VERDICT From his opening line, lies draws you back into Penn Cage's deep South in this phenomenal trilogy's final novel (after Natchez Bunting; The Bone Tree). His heart-racing, enthralling thriller brings to the forefront the racial divisiveness that still plagues this country. [See Prepub Alert, 9/26/16; eight-city tour.]--Joy Gunn, Paseo Verde Lib., Henderson, NV
Gunn, Joy
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Gunn, Joy. "Iles, Greg. Mississippi Blood." Library Journal, 1 Dec. 2016, p. 84+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA472371173&it=r&asid=59cfe131ad831660c9a79ea414527b1f. Accessed 25 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A472371173
Greg Iles concludes his spectacular Natchez Burning trilogy
By Bill Sheehan March 22
In 2014, three years after surviving a near-fatal auto accident, Greg Iles returned to fiction in high style with “Natchez Burning,” an immense, brooding crime novel rooted in the tragic racial history of the American South. One year later, Iles published “The Bone Tree,” an equally immense continuation that moved the narrative forward into dark and disturbing new territory. And now, in “Mississippi Blood,” Iles concludes what is surely one of the longest, most successfully sustained works of popular fiction in recent memory.
Make no mistake, these three volumes constitute a single story, a vast, intimate epic that must be read in sequence and in full. And if the prospect of committing to a narrative spanning 2,300 pages seems daunting,
(William Morrow)
prepare to be surprised. Iles has always been an exceptional storyteller, and he has invested these volumes with an energy and sense of personal urgency that rarely, if ever, falter. A lot of people are going to lose a lot of sleep racing through these pages.
[Review: With ‘Natchez Burning,’ Greg Iles is back better than ever]
The narrator of the trilogy is Penn Cage, the lawyer-turned-novelist-turned-mayor of Natchez who first appeared in “The Quiet Game” (1999). Penn’s father is Tom Cage, a much-loved physician with a dangerous secret. Decades before, in 1968, he entered into a forbidden romantic relationship with his nurse, Viola Turner, who is African American. In the aftermath of that affair, Viola exiled herself to Chicago.
As the present-day story begins, Viola has lung cancer and has come home to Natchez to die. Viola too has a secret: an angry, illegitimate son named Lincoln, who believes that Tom Cage, his biological father, knowingly abandoned him. When Viola dies in what appears to be an attempt at euthanasia, Lincoln accuses Tom of murder.
Like Faulkner before him, Iles believes that the past — in this case, the civil rights era of the 1960s — remains eternally present. Viola herself is an emblematic victim of the worst atrocities of that era. The sister of a murdered civil rights activist, she was herself raped by members of the Double Eagles, a splinter group of the Ku Klux Klan, and her return to Natchez raises an alarm among the surviving members, all of whom have reasons to want her dead.
[Review: ‘The Bone Tree,’ by Greg Iles: Laced with betrayal and twists]
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One central question — Who killed Viola Turner? — stands at the center of a web of narratives that range across 50 violent years and encompass a gallery of carefully drawn characters, among them law enforcement officers both honest and corrupt, crusading journalists and assorted victims, black and white, of the Double Eagles and their kind. “Mississippi Blood” addresses that question by way of Tom Cage’s murder trial, a wildly dramatic affair worthy of Scott Turow. By the time the trial — and this final novel — ends, we have learned the answer and been forced to take a burning look at some of the most shameful episodes of the recent American past.
Like its predecessors, “Mississippi Blood” uses the inexhaustible subject of race as its central thematic concern. Few novelists have conveyed so viscerally the incomprehensible cruelty to which victims of white supremacists were subjected for so long. Few have so convincingly explored the atavistic impulses that underlie racial violence. In the world of these novels, we are no closer to a “post-racial” society than we were 100 years ago. Sometimes, art and life look very much alike.
“Mississippi Blood” is the capstone to what could legitimately be called a magnum opus. Iles has emerged from an excruciating ordeal to create a superb entertainment that is a work of power, distinction and high seriousness. These are angry novels, filled with a sense of deeply-considered moral outrage. They are also prime examples of what the thriller — and other forms of “genre” fiction — can accomplish when pushed beyond traditional limits.
Often grim and frequently horrifying, these Natchez Burning novels set their larger historical concerns against the credibly detailed backdrop of a family in crisis. As the Cage family endures its own trial by fire, Iles shows us both the weaknesses and strength of people tested by extreme circumstances and by secrets and lies that have festered for too long. In successfully illuminating both the inner life of a family in peril and “the troubled borderland between black and white,” he has created something memorable and true.
Bill Sheehan is the author of “At the Foot of the Story Tree: An Inquiry into the Fiction of Peter Straub.”
Mississippi Blood
By Greg Iles
William Morrow. 692 pp. $28.99