An agonizing story that you wish were only fiction .....
I shelved my personalized-signed copy of the lengthy novel
and instead enjoyed the digital audio version of this latest Penn Cage installment.
Admittedly, I was at a slight disadvantage since I have not yet read "The
Devil's Punchbowl," Iles' preceding novel.
However, I quickly absorbed the sickening back-story of racism and
political assassinations that filled so much of the news while I was in
elementary school and growing up in Louisiana and Mississippi. Much of the
first 40 chapters of "Natchez Burning" builds for the reader the
sickening story of the KKK and Brody Royal's Double Eagles, a group bent on a
degree of terror and torture that rivals any modern-day terrorist organization.
It is after these chapters heavily laced in back-story that the novel finally
accelerates, earning for Iles the reviewer cliché: "Couldn't put it
down." Natchez (Mississippi) mayor and novelist Penn Cage and his
publisher fiancée Caitlin Masters strive to learn the truth about the
contemporary murder of an African-American nurse, beloved by the community and
formerly employed by Penn's well-respected physician father. Penn Cage soon
begins to question his father's past actions and motives during the racist
1960s and challenges his own intentions for wanting to learn the truth. He even
wonders if Caitlin’s goals are simply to earn another Pulitzer in journalism by
solving hate crimes of the era. Although portrayed by Iles as a couple truly in
love, Penn and Caitlin initially withhold information from each other to
further their own objectives. The novel jumps back and forth between first and
third persons, which can be confusing to the reader at times, particularly if
listening to the sometimes slow audio version, but fellow Mississippian Greg
Iles has earned the literary pedigree to get away with it. The narrator does a good job reproducing nearly authentic southern dialects and adds some variety between the male characters while his female voices are not strained or silly. The ending to
"Natchez Burning" plays well to the reader's thirst for the second
installment of this planned trilogy, and Greg Iles’ crafty use of descriptive prose
in character development and setting is a marvel.
----- Darden North
www.dardennorth.com
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