Quiet Game: 1 (Penn Cage) - Softcover

Iles, Greg

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451180429 ISBN 13: 9780451180421

Publisher: Penguin, 1999

Synopsis

INTRODUCING PENN CAGE...

From the author of Cemetery Road comes the first intelligent, gripping thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling Penn Cage series.

Natchez, Mississippi. Jewel of the South. City of old money and older sins. And childhood home of Houston prosecutor Penn Cage.

In the aftermath of a personal tragedy, this is where Penn has returned for solitude. This is where he hopes to find peace. What he discovers instead is his own family trapped in a mystery buried for thirty years but never forgotten--the town's darkest secret, now set to trap and destroy Penn as well.

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 The Quiet Game

"The pace is frenetic, the fear and paranoia palpable, and the characters heartbreakingly honest. Iles strikes not one false note."--Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Would make James Lee Burke or even Pat Conroy proud. This is storytelling at its absolute best, a tale of near-epic status."--Providence Sunday Journal

"The plot turns and twists with surprise after surprise...inventive and satisfying. [Iles's] mastery of the Southern setting rings with the truth of his own experience."--New Orleans Times-Picayune

"A definite page-turner...Extremely well-written...profound...wise and disconcerting."--The Daily Mississippian

"The plot twists and turns magnificently...A grand thriller with a wonderful Southern seasoning."--Orange County Register

"A don't-touch-that-dial courtroom climax."--Charlotte Observer

"When the final page of The Quiet Game is turned you feel a pang as when good friends move away."--Orlando Sentinel

"A superb legal-conspiracy thriller that brings the deep South to life...an enthralling tale."--Kirkus Reviews

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0451180429
• ISBN 13: 9780451180421
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 576