Quiet Game

Amazon.com
Is there space in the overcrowded courtroom for one more writer of sharp, very suspenseful legal thrillers? Yes--if that writer is Greg Iles, who has proven in such varied efforts as Black Cross, Mortal Fear, and Spandau Phoenix that he knows how to squeeze the last drop of suspense out of all sorts of situations.

Iles immediately makes us feel both sympathy and empathy for his glossy hero, Penn Cage--a former ace Texas prosecutor turned suspense novelist whose sales are up there in the John Grisham Himalayan range.

Trying to cope with the recent death of his wife, Cage takes his 5-year-old daughter to Florida's Disney World, where the child sadly sees visions of her mother everywhere in the fantasy-filled environment. Wouldn't a trip to his parents' stately home in Natchez be more soothing for all concerned? Wrong, as it turns out--and before Cage can catch his breath, he's deeply involved in several dangerous matters. His father, a dedicated doctor, is being blackmailed for a past mistake in judgment, and a powerful judge (who just happens to be the father of Penn's high school sweetheart) has a nasty personal agenda of his own. Then there's the unsolved 1968 murder case of a black man, which Cage insists on reopening with the help of an attractive, ambitious newspaper publisher.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Greg Iles, a gifted young suspense novelist from Natchez, Mississippi, is nothing if not ambitious. His first two novels, Spandau Phoenix and Black Cross, were sprawling, wide-screen thrillers set against meticulously researched World War II backdrops. His third book, Mortal Fear, combined cutting edge computer technology with an effective variation on that modern archetype, the serial killer. (Mortal Fear, unfortunately, seemed to run out of steam in the final chapters, but for most of its length, was an original and thoroughly engrossing piece of work.) And now we have The Quiet Game, which may be Iles's most ambitious novel to date, a book that is at once a courtroom drama, a murder mystery, a meditation on the recent history of race relations in Mississippi, and a lively, full-blooded example of the Southern Gothic.

As The Quiet Game opens, Penn Cage -- a prosecuting attorney turned bestselling novelist -- is returning, with his four-year-old daughter, to his childhood home of Natchez, where he hopes to recover from the extended trauma of his wife's recent death. Once there, he finds himself quickly caught up in an interconnected series of events whose roots reach back into his -- and his family's -- personal past, and into the troubled, sometimes violent history of Natchez itself.

Shortly after his arrival, Penn discovers that his father, a respected physician, is being blackmailed by a local lowlife named Ray Presley. At about the same time, during the course of an interview with Caitlin Masters, the beautiful, Boston-born publisher of The Natchez Examiner, he inadvertently draws attention to the most notorious race crime in the city's history: the unsolved murder of Del Payton, a black factory worker killed by a car bomb in 1968. Penn's caustic, casually delivered comments on the case have immediate and unexpected consequences: Del's widow, Althea Payton, asks Penn to reinvestigate her husband's murder, while several other parties, each with their own agendas to protect, attempt to pressure Penn into ignoring the request, and allowing the case to remain safely -- and permanently -- unsolved.

Penn's own inclination is to do just that until he meets a tormented, alcoholic policeman named Ike Ransom. Ransom makes the unsubstantiated claim that the person responsible for the Payton murder was Judge Leo Marsden, the man who nearly destroyed Penn's father by implacably pursuing a frivolous malpractice suit some 20 years before. Yielding to the desire for personal revenge, Penn reverses his original position and agrees to take a fresh look at the 30-year-old mystery.

Penn's investigation forms the heart of the narrative and leads, eventually, in some unexpected directions. Before it is complete, that investigation will widen to encompass not only the Payton murder, but the personal history of the Cage family, the tragic sexual secrets of Livy Marsden -- Penn's former lover and Leo Marsden's daughter -- and the paranoid manipulations of the long-deceased J. Edgar Hoover. His pursuit of the elusive truth leads Penn from the mansions and ghettos of Natchez to a cabin in the Colorado mountains, and culminates in a desperate, winner-take-all slander trial whose outcome remains uncertain until the final pages.

The Quiet Game is a densely detailed, swiftly paced novel that constantly runs the risk of going over the top, but never quite does. In the end, Iles holds it all together through an impressive combination of nerve, ingenuity, and narrative energy, and through the sense of personal conviction with which he invests the entire complex enterprise. Like its edgy, impulsive narrator/hero, The Quiet Game moves relentlessly toward closure, and toward a hard-won sense of personal redemption. Along the way, it addresses a number of difficult issues, issues concerning race, class, family, the burdens of history, and the enduring importance of moral accountability. The result is an intricate and absorbing story by a writer who is constantly evolving and who seems likely to produce some significant popular fiction in the years to come. (Bill Sheehan)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Penn Cage, a former prosecutor, uncovers evidence that the unsolved murder of a black man in 1967 Mississippi is not a civil rights crime after all, but one with links to the current town fathers and even the FBI.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Although it takes place in Natchez, Miss., and is flavored with the violence and seamy undertones of a Southern Gothic, this fourth thriller by Iles (Spandau Phoenix) owes just as much to a familiar parallel universe where wealthy male lawyers double as tragic heroes, women are invariably smart and attractive, and trials are by definition "high profile." After his wife's death, Penn Cage, a former Houston prosecutor and a bestselling suspense novelist, retreats to his parents' home in Natchez with his grieving young daughter. The healing process is interrupted when Cage learns that someone is blackmailing his father, a saintly family doctor who once made a lethal mistake. In tracing the source of his father's moral dilemma, Cage stumbles upon a trail of lies surrounding the unsolved murder of a black man in 1968. He determines to reopen the case, even though his antebellum hometown is smoldering with racial tension. With the assistance of Caitlin Masters, the attractive, smart and ambitious publisher of the local newspaper, Cage gradually uncovers an intricate conspiracy that reaches up to the highest levels of the FBI. Forced to confront powerful Judge Leo Marston, who nearly destroyed his father in pursuing an unrelated, unfounded malpractice accusation decades before, Cage must also face Marston's daughter, Livy, his old high school sweetheart, who tries to persuade Cage to let sleeping dogs lie. It is difficult at times to sympathize with Cage, who proselytizes about truth, justice and obligation, yet destroys evidence to protect his father and fails to properly shield his loved ones as he single-mindedly pursues the case. Still, this ably crafted, richly atmospheric legal thriller is engrossing, and readers will forgive Iles's protagonist a few shortcomings. Agent, Aaron Priest. Major ad/promo; 15-city author tour; British rights to Hodder Headline; audio rights to Recorded Books. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

A decision to give up a lucrative law practice in Houston and return to his home town in Natchez, MS, plunges author/ attorney Penn Cage headlong into a 30-year-old unsolved murder with all the trappings of a civil rights case. Penn's motives smack of personal vendetta, since the man he suspects of planning the murder is a powerful former state's attorney and judge who tried to ruin the medical practice of Penn's father through an unsuccessful malpractice suit several years earlier. As Penn probes into the murder, he begins to discover an FBI cover-up, thrusting his family into a life-threatening situation. Iles (Mortal Fear) has penned a Southern superthriller that rivals John Grisham's best. Fast-paced action, surprise tactics, and down-and-dirty legal maneuvering played out below the surface calm of the deep South will transfix the reader to the very last page. Recommended for all public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/99.]--Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

AudioFile

There is literally nothing "quiet" about either the plot or the reading of Iles's new thriller. It is a bold, explosive mystery about Penn Cage, a former assistant DA turned novelist, who returns to his Mississippi birthplace to uncover a thirty-year-old conspiracy to murder a black war veteran. Sometimes the plot is packed in suspense, and other times it is so hokey it is delicious. Hill is more than up to the job of portraying the predominantly Southern accents. His voices don't waver, whether his character is rescuing a victim from a burning house or addressing judge and jury. When Cage wins against all odds because of an unforeseen twist, the listener is tempted to stand up and cheer him and Hill. A.L.H. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

Charles Winecoff - Entertainment Weekly

It's a tribute to Iies' flair for characterization that this capacious thriller grabs you fast and keeps you glued. Such a stunt wouldn't be nearly as much fun if his cast of living, breathing Southerners didn't make you care.

Kirkus Reviews

Preposterous, but eminently suspenseful, legal procedural about a Mississippi river town's buried secrets, by the author of Mortal Fear (1996), etc. Penn Cage, once a Texas prosecutor, now an infinitely wealthy bestselling lawyer-novelist, can't get over the recent cancer death of his wife, and is just a bit troubled about death threats from the brother of a demented white supremacist he put on death row. After a vacation in Disney World with his daughter Annie, Cage embarks on an extended visit with his parents in Natchez, Tennessee, where he finds that Ray Presley, a white-trash former cop is blackmailing Penn's saintly physician father. It seems that Presley filched a gun from the good doctor, then used it in an unsolved murder. Now, Penn buys back the gun from Presley with a mountain of cash, and later sits down for a famous author interview with the young, rich, beautiful, and brainy Caitlin Masters, the Pulitzer-crazed publisher of the local newspaper, during which he mentions, in passing, a 1968 racially motivated murder of Del Peyton, a young, black factory worker that both the police and the FBI failed to solve. Masters prints her interview, stirring up old animosities all over, including a rancorous legal dispute between Cage's father and Judge Leo Marston, a local powerbroker who was a district attorney at the time. Peyton's widow suddenly appears and asks the famous writer to find who killed her husband. Penn reluctantly agrees, then runs into his old girlfriend, Livy Marston, Leo's flawless, southern-belle daughter. Livy mysteriously ditched Cage 20 years ago, but now can't wait to stoke the old fire. Meanwhile, FBI Director John Portman, Cage's old nemesis, weighs in withnasty threats as Cage braves bullies, dodges bullets, rides down icy rapids, and prepares for a courtroom battle. Breezy, Grisham-style read that tweaks the conventions of southern gothic. (Author tour)

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

The Quiet Game by Greg Iles takes the legal thriller to the net level, mixing it with absorbing characters and rich family drama. You won't be able to put it down! — Lisa Scottoline