Natchez Burning: A Novel (Penn Cage, 4)

I just finished reading Greg Iles’ “Natchez Burning” for the second time, and I thought I’d add my voice to the other 4,500-plus people who have reviewed this superb crime novel on Amazon.com. “Natchez Burning” is the first in a trilogy of novels about a series of fictional unsolved civil rights-era murders in Natchez, Mississippi and its surrounding areas. It is also the fourth in a series of novels featuring protagonist Penn Cage, a former Houston, Texas prosecutor, a published novelist, and currently the mayor of Natchez, Mississippi. Cage suddenly finds himself confronted with the fact that his father, Dr. Tom Cage – the town’s most respected and beloved physician – is about to be arrested for murdering Viola Turner, an African American nurse who worked for him forty years earlier, and with whom he briefly carried on a torrid love affair. Penn Cage believes his father didn’t do it, but his father refuses to answer any questions about what happened to Viola. Nothing seems clear about the case. It somehow appears to be linked to a series of unsolved, forty-year-old racial killings by members of an ultra-violent offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan. Penn Cage can be sure of only one thing: the local district attorney, a bitter personal and political enemy of his, is determined to send Dr. Tom Cage to prison for the rest of his life, as an act of revenge against his son... I have read several of Greg Iles’ novels, and I have enjoyed each one tremendously. I am especially impressed with the books in his Penn Cage series. Iles populates his novels with fascinating characters, engrossing and suspenseful plots and sub-plots, and plenty of twists, turns and surprises. Iles writes with a wonderful flair. His prose is smooth, literate, and easy to read, and it keeps getting better with each book. “Natchez Burning” is easily the best of the Penn Cage novels I’ve read… so far. It took me only four days to devour its 789 pages. This is crime fiction at its best. Most highly recommended.

I've never read this author before and the subject matter is something that's always interested me. It entwines the present with the past, the crimes of the segregationist south refuse to stay buried. Although I grew up during the civil rights movement and the time of segregation, it's something I've never experienced personally. It was something on the news from another part of the country which may have been another part of the world. It always amazes me to read about the cruelty inflicted by one group on another when they know they can get away with it. The story is of justice and retribution a half century later. I wasn't familiar with the characters, but there's plenty of references to earlier plot lines to keep you current with their situation. The story was quick moving and hard to put down. What frustrated me was that the characters were always doing something that you knew would not end well...like the teenager that knows there's a man-eating tiger on the loose and goes out exploring armed with a pair of nail scissors. I guess it takes dangerous situations to move the plot along and keep those pages turning, but I wanted to scream..."Don't do that, you know they're homicidal maniacs!" I didn't realize that this was the first of what is to be a trilogy, which explains the ending. It just felt like it ended a few hundred pages too soon, with too many loose ends and no way to tie them all into a neat little bow. I'm glad there's more to come because I was really disappointed after investing so many hours in a book and then having essentially a non-ending. Of course when the next edition comes out I will have to reread this one to refresh the story line. I actually enjoy reading a big book the second time because I pick up so much more detail and then I am ready to move on to the installment. Overall, a good read, just don't expect a complete ending just a resolution to the most intense situation.

Natchez Burning is a sweeping epic of Civil Rights in Natchez, Mississippi, from the 1960s to present day and is the first of three books in a series. Don’t be afraid of the length – Natchez Burning is absolutely gripping and reads like a John Grisham thriller…making you forget it’s 800 pages long! Through his “off the books” investigation into the accusations against his pillar of the community father (Dr. Tom Cage), Penn encounters the Double Eagles*, a splinter group of the Ku Klux Klan that terrorized Natchez in the 1960′s. He teams up with Henry Sexton, a local reporter who has been investigating several unsolved 1960′s murders that were rumored to have been committed by the Double Eagles and is pulled into a dangerous world where the terror of the KKK and its offshoots is alive and well today. I was immediately enthralled with Natchez Burning – there is so much going on right out of the gates that I wondered where Iles was going to go with the story for another 600 pages! Not to worry, he found TONS of places to go! Not only is Penn struggling to save his father (and dealing with the emotional issues that come with realizing a parent may not be the pinnacle of integrity that everyone thinks), but you also have the KKK and the Double Eagles, local police, the Mafia (Carlos Marcello), prominent businessmen, the FBI, civil rights activists, and the politics of rebuilding New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. All these elements fight it out in a cesspool of corruption and lawlessness right out of the Wild West – how can this story not be completely gripping?! The book’s lesson from all of this: “none of us truly knows anybody”. Iles does a great job of completely immersing the reader in that world. I could feel the fear, danger, and evil jumping off the pages. No one is safe and the “take the law into your own hands” atmosphere that you think was confined to the Civil Rights era is actually thriving in Iles’ present day. Iles also poses some fascinating “what if” scenarios (events that probably didn’t happen, but possibly could have) about real life events, specifically the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK. This was a shrewd move considering how much speculation and how many conspiracy theories still exist about these three murders, giving the reader the feeling that Natchez Burning‘s version of events is in the realm of the possible. I’m a total sucker for these kinds of things and this aspect of the book reminded me of bit of Stephen King’s 11/22/63, one of my all-time favorites. Despite its length, Natchez Burning was a book I did not want to put down and I can’t wait for the next installment of the series (supposedly coming out in the next year or two). Natchez Burning will no doubt make my Best Books of the Year list for 2014. *Obviously, I was curious if the Double Eagles or a similar group may have existed in real life in 1960′s Mississippi….so I took to Google and found an article outlining the real-life events and people featured in Natchez Burning. The fictional Double Eagles are based on a KKK splinter cell called The Silver Dollar Group, fictional Concordia Beacon journalist Henry Sexton is based on the real life Concordia Sentinel journalist Stanley Nelson, and the fictional Albert Norris (owner of Norris’ Music Emporium and one of the story’s central murder victims) is based on the real life shoe store owner and murder victim, Frank Morris. The fact that Natchez Burning is based on real events and people takes it to a whole other level of fascinating for me! For more reviews, check out my blog, Sarah's Book Shelves.

Penn Cage is the mayor of Natchez Mississippi. He is also a former prosecutor and lawyer. His father, Tom Cage, a family physician, is accused of murdering his former nurse, Viola Turner, who worked with him in the 1960’s in the midst of the civil war conflicts. Viola was beautiful and Tom was very much in love with her. Now she has come back to her old town to die. Tom is accused of killing her when it might have been assisted suicide. Nonetheless, the old members of the Double Eagles, a small group of fanatical KKK members run by Brody Royals, the wealthiest man in town, have vowed to kill her if she ever came back. Tom Cage is not saying anything about Viola’a death- not even to defend himself. Was he responsible? At this point, the story takes off in many different directions from Henry Sexton, the reporter who has been trying to discover clues about the Double Eagles for decades and has amassed a vast amount of information on them to the aging members of the Double Eagles as they try to silence one of their own who is dying and willing to tell all to Henry. There are also flashbacks detailing the killings of innocent men by the Double Eagles. The book is vast- over 800 pages. It is filled with subplots all of which are relevant and great stories in themselves. In a sense, the story is about time and whether it actually changes anything. It is about how tied into our past we are. There is a great deal of suspense and harrowing deaths in this book. It reads so very fast in spite of it’s size. The reader will be totally drawn into these characters. I feel this is the best book I have read in the genre so far this year. Actually, I would have given it an A+ if it weren’t for the very wordy and stock ending of the villain holding the hero captive and telling all. This is the first of a proposed trilogy and, as expected, there are a lot of loose ends. I highly recommend this superb novel.

Last night, I finished reading Natchez Burning, a novel by Greg Iles. A nail-biter to the very end, a central theme developed (among others) is that the past is anything but past. Even stones, tossed into a deep pond set in motion a chain of events that will eventually bring that stone to the surface again, whether anyone wants to see it again, or not. Mr. Iles has woven together a novel inspired by historic racial killings in the deep South of fifty to sixty years ago. A radical and violent offshoot of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, known as the Double Eagles, specialize in the targeted killing of African Americans, to inspire fear, yes, but also to lure larger targets into the web of violence to exert social control and eliminate federal figures driving the Civil Rights Movement. Shadowy connections to the Mob in New Orleans are funneled through a Louisiana Real Estate Mogul (with holdings in many industries) who orders the hits. The book opens with the firebombing of a Black-owned Music Store in Natchez, and slowly the connections of this web begin enfolding many of the characters in the story. Young black men disappear and are never heard from again. A white doctor's supposedly discreet affair with his chief office nurse (a beautiful African American woman) becomes a lie he tries to leave buried in the past, except her brother is a key player in the Voting Rights Struggle, and falls under the radar of the violent Double Eagles. To lure this brother out of hiding, the nurse is violently raped by members of the Eagles, and this indeed brings the brother and a friend out of hiding. With the help of her doctor/lover, the nurse ends up fleeing to Chicago after her brother disappears. Fast-forward to the present. The nurse returns to Natchez to die, having contracted cancer. A former member of the Double Eagles, in the final stages of cancer suddenly gets religion and feels the need to break his blood oath and confess to a series of crimes of which a local reporter has been trying to solve for 40 years. The reporter is spotted leaving the informant's house, and the next day, said informant suddenly dies. Within a few days, the reporter is kidnapped, and his newspaper offices are fire-bombed -- and the past suddenly comes alive. The FBI dredges a local deep hole in a by-water of the Mississippi, and human bones, handcuffed to the steering wheel of a submerged Pontiac are brought up and identified. Above all, the central character of the story, Natchez Mayor Penn Cage, son of the doctor who has concealed that long ago affair, is confronted with the sudden revelation of a side to his father he never would have imagined. A key quote presented in the novel is"If a man is forced to choose between the truth and his father, only a fool chooses the truth." I'll leave it to your own reading of the book to decipher that one. Did I also mention the fact that the doctor is now charged with the murder of his ex-nurse/lover, an impaneled jury has returned an indictment, and the doctor has gone AWOL? There is a lot going on in this story. Hopefully this is enough to tantalize you to read this gripping novel. Will not spoil the ending, but Mr. Iles is very willing to leave loose strands untied at the end -- sequel pending, perhaps?

NATCHEZ BURNING, the latest entry in Grey Iles's Penn Cage series leaves too many unanswered questions to be a really satisfying read. The book, as any by IIes , is well-written and evokes that mixture of Old South and Modern Day Natchez, Mississippi, that the reader expects. It also evokes the bitterness and racial hatred that characterized the Civil Rights' Movement during the 1960s. Despite the well-meaning attempts by both races to keep the Civil Rights' Movement "Civil," vicious and inhuman acts were committed by the Ku Klux Klan and even more radical groups. In terms of man's inhumanity to man, this period in our history is about as bad as it gets, and IIes unerringly describes it in often horrifying detail. Now mayor of Natchez, Penn Cage is much of a crusader for right as ever, but is discovering that his position doesn't come with a guarantee that the changes to the town's social structure and correction of certain inequities that he wants will be implemented. Then his old enemy and corrupt public official, Shad Johnson, Natchez's District Attorney, call Penn to tell him that his father, Tom Cage, the city's oldest and most beloved doctor, is being accused of murder, and Shad is investigating. Specifically, Tom may be guilty of violating the states Assisted Suicide Law at best, or deliberate murder of a former employee at worst. Penn knows his father is incapable of murder and immediately asks Tom about the circumstances surrounding the death of Viola, his former nurse. Penn is shocked when Tom refuses to talk about it, saying he will handle the situation on his own. Penn's faith in his father is further shaken when a crusading journalist from a near-by weekly newspaper, who has spent decades investigating the murders or disappearances of certain African-Americans during the 1960s, shows Penn a video he has of Viola's death. Although Viola was dying of cancer, it is obvious from the video that cancer was not the cause of death--and she calls Tom Cage's name. As Tom Cage is arrested for murder, and Penn investigates the case and finds more and more connections between his father and the men involved in the Civil Rights Movement both as victims and perpetrators of violence, he has more questions than answers. Most of the questions shake his faith in his father's integrity. What was his father exact relationship with Viola? Were they lovers, and was Viola's son fathered by Tom Cage? What does Tom know of the murders of certain black men during the 1960s? Did a band of men guilty of unspeakable acts against black men in the 1960s murder Viola when she returns to Natchez to die because she knows too much about the murder of her brother? When the Grand Jury indicts Tom Cage for murder, the doctor jumps bail and flees without telling either his wife or Penn where he is going or why. The second in command of the state police, a corrupt relative of one of the band of murders, puts out an order to his agency to bring in Tom Cage, dead or alive. Penn's investigation stirs up the dirty secrets of the past, and he makes as deal with the devil in the form of the financial backer of the band who murdered the black men in the 1960s. Unfortunately, many of these questions are unanswered at the end of the book. Although many of the guilty from the 1960s finally meet a justified end, Iles does not satisfactorily resolve his father's situation. Tom has committed two felonies beside skipping bail, and the reader doesn't know how the doctor will escape unscathed from these charges. Neither does the reader know whether Viola's son is indeed Tom's. Tom believes one thing and acts accordingly, but he may have been deceived. Shad Johnson is still DA, still corrupt. Most jarring in terms of characterization is Penn's deal with the financier. While Penn will do anything to save his father, he must know that he cannot trust the financier, and will be making a bad situation even worse. It seems an act that is out of character for the Penn Cage the reader has come to know over several books. Also, using conspiracy theories that still swirl around JFK's and Martin Luther King's assassinations does not strengthen the story. The deeds of the the band of murders are horrifying enough. While I still recommend the book, the reads needs to be aware that there are dangling strings at the end. This is not a tidy story with all the loose ends tied up with a blue ribbon. For readers with little patience for conspiracy theories, their inclusion in the story may be that one step too far for suspension of disbelief.

The wait for this one was long, thanks to a bout of very ill health near the publication date. But it's worth the wait - an engaging read, especially if you enjoy historical events woven in. And the ending left me wanting more, which is the best way to end a book, without all that wrap-it-up-in-a-neat-bow rubbish. Life never gets wrapped up. I didn't give 5 stars because +++++I've tried to avoid direct SPOILERS, but there may be more info here than you'd like+++++ the drawn out moments (and there's more than one of these) near the end, where you know that what you're being set up for isn't what's actually going to happen. That seemed pretty rushed-for-publication to me, to use that more cliched action technique. Also, I felt set up for a sequel, which isn't my happiest way to end a story. While I don't like everything all wrapped up, I equally dislike ending before the situation the entire book has been about has had a resolution. Not "for good" what happens, but in the immediate situation. Lastly, while the book was, thematically, about fracturedness (no one is truly good - does that also mean someone cannot be truly evil?), I find Tom's "I'm a martyr" attitude insufferable. No, he's not 100% amazing, like everyone thinks he is, but there was little recognition by anyone, characters and author alike, of who and how many people he has hurt.and is continuing to hurt through his own selfish actions (or lack of them). What I mean by that is he is still the saint, despite everything, which seems to go against the main ideas being developed. +++++END of possible SPOILERS+++++ However, all in all, still a very entertaining read, and worth the money to buy as a new hardback if that's your thing.

Are you looking for a tome to weight down the corner of your beach towel, to be a doorstop back at camp, or, most of all, to keep you reading all afternoon and into the night? This may be it! My wife and I always read a few books together over the summer, and this was the first of the season. It's popular fiction (endorsed by Stephen King and Jodi Picoult), and once you get in the driver's seat, buckle up because you're going for a ride. If you take it on, just realize it's part of a trilogy, so you'll have hours of reading ahead of you. For me, that's a plus. I started reading Natchez Burning on a train ride to New York City. I read for eight hours on the way south and finished after eight more hours on the way home. The gist of the tale is that Penn Cage, novelist and now mayor of Natchez, is fighting to save his father from jail time--which may induce another heart attack--following the death of Viola Turner. Viola was once Dr. Thomas Cage's nurse, and when she returns to Natchez to die of cancer, it appears that Tom may have ended her life as an act of mercy at her request. The D.A., however, charges Dr. Cage with murder, and it begins to look as though Penn's father may have secrets his son never suspected. These secrets are entangled with crimes and murders committed during the civil rights era of the 1960s, a time when Dr. Cage may have become involved with the Double Eagles, a group of violent men who left the Ku Klux Klan because the Klan was too ineffectual. Author Greg Iles is from Mississippi and notes in an afterword that, although Natchez Burning is fiction, some of the unsolved cases of the sixties provided inspiration for the novel. I've already ordered the second book, The Bone Tree, and look forward to getting back in the action and following these characters in their titanic struggle. It's excellent entertainment, and--fiction or not--it offers some fascinating glimpses into the culture of the Deep South.

Exceedingly well written book about a nation's disgraceful treatment of a portion of their society from the time of Civil Rights until present day. Part One opens in 1964 with three brutal murders of black men by Klansmen in Natchez, Mississippi. These men weren't just killed, they were tortured in such disgusting ways that I didn't know if I could continue reading. And it was because a white girl and a black boy had fallen in love in those tumultuous times. The boy was Pooky Wilson a would be musician and piano tuner. He arranged his tete a tete in the music shop of his mentor Albert Norris who had taught Jerry Lee Lewis a few licks on the piano. Norris would be the first to die when the Klansmen burned his music shop to the ground, setting him on fire. And the other two men, were Jimmy Revels, the brother of nurse Viola Turner who worked for Dr. Cage, the local G.P. and Luther Davis. Luther and Jimmy were in hiding together until the KKK animals took turns beating and raping his sister Viola for forty eight hours in order to draw them out. Once out in the open again, the Klansmen grabbed them and did unspeakable things to them before they died. The bodies of Luther and Jimmy were never found as Luther was dropped in a swamp, and Jimmy was left in "The Bone Tree". Two other bodies of FBI agents were also never found. When we flash forward to 2005 the story continues with the Mayor of Natchez, Penn Cage who is the son of Doctor Cage. Dr. Cage is being charged with the murder of his nurse who was once his employee, Viola Turner , who has returned to Mississippi from Chicago to die. She has stage four cancer. It is suggested that Doctor Cage preformed a mercy killing due to a pact they had made forty years before. I could continue writing the plot out, but it would pale in comparison to Greg Iles writing. Many more characters appear on the landscape, an intrepid journalist determined to solve these cold cases because of his love for the musician who shaped his early life. Penn Cage's fiancee, Caitlin who is a newspaper publisher and reporter. Defense lawyers and prosecutors and judges all make appearances. And lastly, the dreaded and cruel, vicious and stupid members of the Double Eagles the sickest group of the KKK lead by a well known businessman, Brody Royal, whose daughter had been the lover of Pooky Wilson. I woke up this morning at 5:30 am to finish reading the book before breakfast. I could not put it down until it was over. Astonishing!

J'ai cliqué sur la version française de ce livre pour Kindle et le logiciel lui a substitué une version anglaise. Comment puis-je être remboursé ?

Thank you THANK YOU to Kate and Bob at Killer Reads for the advance copy. Probably THE best book post I have ever had. Penn Cage is facing a son’s worst nightmare – having his father stand accused of murder. Worse, each effort to defend the legendary Dr Tom Cage unearths new, shocking secrets, leaving Penn to question whether he ever really knew his father at all. So for those of you who have not read the previous Penn Cage novels from Greg Iles (the first being “The Quiet Game” ) I would encourage you to do so, however you CAN start here – the first part of a planned trilogy featuring the character, as there is enough information for a new reader without actually spoiling the previous books. There are reasons why this is one of the best “presents” I have received since reviewing seriously – a few years back I read the last Penn Cage novel, “The Devils Punchbowl” which was as brilliantly addictive as all the rest. When it ended there was a hint, a taster if you like, for what might happen next. In the notes Mr Iles told us that, unusually, there would be a further Penn Cage novel the following year (usually there is a bigger gap – he also writes TREMENDOUSLY gripping standalone books and never actually intended to write a series but Penn wouldnt go away) then of course disaster struck. Mr Iles was involved in a serious accident – all that mattered after that was recovery. I, for one, am extremely grateful that recover he did over a period of time, otherwise the world would have lost another great writer on top of the obvious horror of personal loss for his family.I prayed. I’m sure his other readers did as well. And now here we are.. And what a glorious, once again addictive, seriously mind blowing read we have here. Absolutely gripping. A deeply involving story about the effects and events surrounding racial tension in the Deep South Mr Iles blends fact and fiction with terrific effect. Past leaks into present with terrifying results and as well as being a most fascinating tale, for this reader it was also an education. These subjects are dealt with in previous books but for me this was a revelation. On top of all that, there is the well drawn, compelling story of the relationship between father and son. Tom Cage is a local hero, known as a moral man, loved by many, the backbone of his community and a much admired Doctor. He grew up during the troubled times where the colour of your skin determined how you were treated, viewed, what you were allowed to do with your life, where you could eat, sleep, drink. Always assuming him to be on the side of truth and justice, Penn has always had the greatest love and affection for his Dad and an instinctive trust about who he is. All that is about to be thrown up into the air, who knows where the pieces will land or what will be left of this trust when it is all over. Amazing. The only word that springs to mind. As dark secrets begin to emerge, you will be swept along with the sheer beauty of the writing, the absolute emotion of each moment and often sitting on the edge of your seat awaiting answers to, frankly, unanswerable questions about the way human beings treat each other. Will Tom Cage ultimately turn out to be exactly who Penn thought he was? Or is he as fallible as the rest… I am in awe. And I cannot wait for the next part of the story, it has buried itself deep within my reading soul and I imagine that overall this is one that will stay with me for life. Read it. Love it. Live it. Happy Reading Folks!

What a sensational thriller. Genuinely page turning breath taking writing. Just love the protagonist. You rock Penn Cage!!

The book has slow, a very slow start....you have to reach page 360 to see the end of the first day of the story...lots of flash backs, lots of digressions, lots of reflections. In fact the author does a lot of foundational work in this first part of the book; the story is rooted in a far past, and several connections between the present days and that remote time need to be planted upfront, and this takes time. I guess this is the toll the novel has to pay to qualify as "epic", and it actually does; though the time in which the present day events take place is only a few days, the story spans over 40 years....so the breadth of the story is wide and its themes deep, from the racial tensions of the 60's in Mississippi to the killings of MLK, JFK and RFK, which provide the historical background to the events involving Penn Cage, his father and more broadly all his dears. Moreover, all this foundational work is needed as a basis of not only this book, but of the entire trilogy. This makes up a pretty intricate plot, where the events unfold in rather complicated ways; the the story is almost overworked, with different layers overlapping, hence you must have some patience to keep all the pieces together in your mind. This is a long, long book, after the slow start it picks up nicely in the middle part but then the last third has a few holes where the narration loses tension and you start feeling some reading fatigue. To this, one must add the fact that the author pushes all situations in such exaggerated ways to border (or someone may say pass) the limits of believability even for a fiction; this was actually the decisive factor for me to rate the book 3 vs. 4 stars. So, in the end, this is a heavy tome, both figuratively and literally, you need to bear with story all along its 800+ pages, but the writing is pretty good enough not to make it a mission impossible.