The Quiet Game - Softcover

Iles, Greg

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007545703 ISBN 13: 9780007545704

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2014

Synopsis

The first thriller in the New York Times No.1 bestselling series featuring Penn Cage: a prosecutor in a corrupt system, a husband whose wife has died, and a father who must protect his daughter. ‘An engrossing, page-turning ride’ (Jeffery Deaver).

Don’t say a word...

Natchez, Mississippi. A city of old money and older sins. A place where a thirty-year-old crime lies buried, and everyone plays the quiet game. But on man cannot stay silent.

Returning to his home town, former prosecuting attorney Penn Cage is stunned to discover that his father is being blackmailed over a decades-old murder.

Negotiating the town’s undercurrents of greed, corruption, and racial tension, Penn uncovers a powerful secret that reaches to the highest levels of government.

And as the town closes ranks, Penn realises that his crusade for justice has taken a dangerous turn- one which could cost him his life...

About this title

Review:

Successful novelist Penn Cage comes back to Natchez to recover--a long career as a prosecutor has left him with enemies on both sides of the law and he has been shattered by the death of his wife. A quixotic decision to talk frankly about the town's racial politics to Caitlin, an attractive woman journalist, means he is asked to investigate the long-ago murder of black civil rights worker Del Payton, and almost at once he is being threatened, cajoled and shot at. Cage finds his enquiries coming close to home--his doctor father has skeletons in his closet and Liv Marston, the high school sweetheart Cage loved and lost, comes back into his life the moment he starts investigating the activities and connections of her industrialist father.

Iles' Natchez is a superficially civilised rats nest of intrigue where everyone plays the quiet game:

White and black both. Everybody keeping quiet, making like things is sweet and easy, trying to fish that new plant in here. Nobody wants nobody digging into Del's killing. Nobody 'cept you...Del's killers is playing the quiet game too. They been playing it thirty years. Not even sweatin'. You got to make people nervous to win the quiet game...

Cage, a man driven by a mixture of justice and vengeance, is a convincing new hero from Iles, if one who comes with rather more back story than is always easy to assimilate. The eventual courtroom drama--Cage adopts the high-risk strategy of making Marson sue him for slander--is especially powerful. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

Praise for Greg Iles:

‘A scorching read’ John Grisham

‘Iles is a phenomenal thriller writer’ Independent on Sunday

‘An engrossing page-turning ride’ Jeffery Deaver

‘A rarity. A thriller that really thrills’ Stephen King

‘Alarming, believable, and utterly consuming’ Dan Brown

‘Splendidly creepy ... compulsive’ Daily Telegraph

‘An incredible web of intrigue and suspense, an avalanche of action from first page to last’ Clive Cussler

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0007545703
• ISBN 13: 9780007545704
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 640