The Quiet Game. Finished 5-6-17, rating 4.5/5, mystery, 624 pages, pub. 2000

Penn Cage #1

Penn Cage is no stranger to death. As a Houston prosecutor he sent sixteen men to death row, and watched seven of them die. But now, in the aftermath of his wife’s death, the grief-stricken father packs up his four-year-old daughter, Annie, and returns to his hometown in search of healing. But peace is not what he finds there.

Determined to save his father from a ruthless blackmailer, Penn stumbles over a link to the town’s darkest secret: the thirty-year-old unsolved murder of a black Korean War veteran. But what drives him to act is the revelation that this haunting mystery is inextricably bound up with his own past. Under a blaze of national media attention, Penn reopens the case, only to find local records destroyed, the FBI file sealed, and the town closing ranks against him.     from Goodreads

Penn Cage’s sixth book was released this year and I was able to hear author Greg Iles as he came to a local library to promote, Mississippi Burning, but I decided to start back at the beginning.  Penn lives in Natchez, Mississippi and much of this 2000 book was about race.  A race crime took place when Penn was a child and the FBI, under Hoover, closed and sealed the case without ever solving it.  When he finds out someone is blackmailing his daddy, he runs smack dab into this old powder keg of a case.

I liked Penn and his family.  Penn, prosecutor turned bestselling author, lost his wife to cancer but little Annie was the apple of his eye.  His parents were both pillars of strength and good in Natchez.  Penn himself was just trying to do what was right.  He managed to have a few romantic entanglements as the bullets were flying around him, but I won’t hold that against him.

It was a long book, but I found ways to sneak reading time in here and there, a certain sign of a great book.  I already have the second Penn Cage book and am looking forward to reading it soon.  If you like southern stories, mysteries, and great writing I think this may be the book for you!