Book Review of Natchez Burning

There are good books. There are great books, and then there are books that you literally can’t put down. It’s been a very long time since I started a book in the morning and read through lunch, supper and finally finished it about midnight. Without a doubt it’s one of my all time favorites.

Greg Iles latest book, Natchez Burning, is nearly 800 pages (which helps explain why it took me a whole day to read it). I didn’t mind a bit that it was so long, in fact I liked it so much I kept hoping it would never end. In a way it didn’t end, Natchez Burning is the first book of a 3 part series.

This is Amazon.com’s summary of the story….

Growing up in the rural Southern hamlet of Natchez, Mississippi, Penn Cage learned everything he knows about honor and duty from his father, Tom Cage. But now the beloved family doctor and pillar of the community is accused of murdering Violet Turner, the beautiful nurse with whom he worked in the dark days of the early 1960s. A fighter who has always stood for justice, Penn is determined to save his father, even though Tom, stubbornly evoking doctor-patient privilege, refuses to speak up in his own defense.

The quest for answers sends Penn deep into the past—into the heart of a conspiracy of greed and murder involving the Double Eagles, a vicious KKK crew headed by one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the state. With the aid of a local friend and reporter privy to some of Natchez’s oldest and deadliest secrets, Penn follows a bloody trail that stretches back forty years, to one undeniable fact: no one—black or white, young or old, brave or not—is ever truly safe.

With everything on the line, including his own life, Penn must decide how far he will go to protect those he loves . . . and see justice done, once and for all.

Rich in Southern atmosphere and electrifying plot turns, Natchez Burning marks the brilliant return of a genuine American master of suspense. Tense and disturbing, it is the most explosive, exciting, sexy, and ambitious story Greg Iles has written yet.

I highly recommend this book but I’m warning you….you may not be able to put it down!