Natchez Burning

Penn Cage, a Southern lawyer who once worked as a prosecutor, was raised in Natchez, Mississippi, where his father, Tom, taught him to value honor and responsibility. Tom is a respected family physician, and that reputation is now under threat: he has been charged with killing Violet Turner, a nurse who worked alongside him during the turbulent early 1960s. Penn is determined to clear his father, but Tom won't offer a word in his own defense, invoking the confidentiality owed to patients.

To find the truth, Penn has to dig into the town's buried history. His search leads to the Double Eagles, a violent Klan-linked group run by one of the most influential and wealthy men in the state, and to a conspiracy built on greed and murder. Helping him is a local journalist who knows the darkest stories Natchez has kept hidden. Following a trail of violence that reaches back four decades, Penn learns that no one in the community is truly out of danger, and he must weigh how far he is willing to go, even at the risk of his own life, to protect the people he loves and to see justice done.

The novel is set in the Deep South and is steeped in its atmosphere and history. It is the first book in a planned trilogy and returns to Penn Cage, a character who appears in several of Greg Iles's earlier novels. Readers who enjoy tense crime investigations with a strong historical and social undercurrent will find it appealing.