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After a five year hiatus due to a horrific auto accident, Greg Iles returns with what is undoubtedly his masterpiece, a book that is announced as the first of a trilogy.
Iles uses the Cage family, featured in many of his novels, as the vehicle to tell a monumental story of the old south from the 1970s until about the Katrina hurricane. Penn Cage’s father, Tom has been a doctor ministering to both whites and blacks for many years. He had, in the past, a short lived affair with his Afro American nurse, Viola Turner, who rather than compromising Tom’s marriage left the area to move to Chicago. Viola was raped by men belonging to a secret group within the Ku Klux Klan before leaving Mississippi for Chicago. Many years later she was dying of cancer. She returned to tell Tom and others that she had had a child in Chicago.
The question later arises if the child is Tom’s or as a result of the group rape. Viola dies and examination indicates that she did not pass away as a result of the cancer. Enemies of Tom Cage accuse him of murder citing the possibility of a mercy killing to ease Viola’s pain.
Penn Cage, the mayor of Natchez, takes on the task of proving that his father is not guilty of any crime, and in undertaking the investigation opens up a long history of criminal activity, including murder by the “Double Eagles,” the group within the KKK led by one of the richest and most powerful men in Mississippi. Iles takes us into an era when blacks were second class citizens and crimes against them were not considered in the same vein as against whites. Complete segregation was enforced by hate groups openly pursuing the practice and it appears that Penn’s task will involve opening the past in order to prove his father innocent of murder.
Natchez Burning is over 800 pages in length but proves to be completely engrossing, forcing the reader to continue reading far into the night. The book solves several problems, first of which is to prove Tom Cage innocent of murder but leaves many other details for the second and third book. This novel can be read as a stand alone, and is very satisfying as is, but does leave room for the other areas to be detailed in the following novels. Great book, extremely well done and certainly a return to normal for Iles.
4/14 Paul Lane
NATCHEZ BURNING by Greg Iles. William Morrow (April 29, 2014). ISBN 978-0062311078. 800p.
Stacy Alesi's BookBitch.com™ 
Can this book be read without reading the prior Penn Cage novels?
Actually, this is the first book of a trilogy, so no, you don’t have to read the previous Penn books at all. Go for it! It’s a really great read, I loved it
Will you email me so I can ask a spoiler question about Natchez Burning? I finished it.