The Quiet Game (Penn Cage Book 1) Kindle Edition

I don’t know how I missed this series for so long. I’ve been reading practically nonstop for two days/nights. I have the next book in the series already in my kindle library

Here's the thing. The Quiet Game is popular fiction. Now before you think I'm being a snob, I happen to like popular fiction. In fact, this book has two points in its favor right off the bat. One is that author Greg Iles is part of a rock band called the Rock Bottom Remainders (yeah... remainders... as in books that didn't sell). And you guessed it, they're all writers! According to their website, Dave Barry and Stephen King are members too. Dave Barry said, "We play music as well as Metallica writes novels." Kirk Hammet, of Metallica said, "Rock Bottom Remainders? Who are they?" Okay, so they're not great, but I don't think it's a coincidence that three of my favorite authors, King, Iles, and Barry are rock musicians. There's a cosmic link there somewhere, I just don't know what it is. As to the second point... I'm a sexagenerian, and I've already forgotten it! No, now I remember (sixty hours later)--to my knowledge none of Iles' books sport a prestigious medal like the National Book Award. As Remainders' band member Joel Selvin said, "Most people seem to think critics are as useful as tits on a priest." Okay, I'm joking, a little, but I've read some books with blue ribbons that were pretty bad. Sometimes it seems like they have to glow radioactively with angst, black despair, and good people dying before they can be assigned to the top shelf.I know, I know, I haven't actually said anything about The Quiet Game yet. You're probably thinking all this random nonsense is about as useful as judging a book by its cover (I do that, too). Well, hey, I think all information may serve some purpose. It's just like my grandfather said about the jar of bent nails I held up as we were cleaning out his cellar... "You never know when something like that will come in handy." I'm trying to give you the appetizers here; we'll sit down to the entree soon enough. Anyway, I do like some "literature." For example, Anthony Doerr's book, All the Light We Cannot See was the bomb (not a good metaphor for a World War II novel, but still... it was)! That said, I've read some "literature" lately, books with medals on the covers, that sent me running to the toilet. Sorry, maybe that's too graphic.If you give me a choice between a book that has literary merit and one that has good storytelling, I'll ask you to give me one that has both (like All the Light!), but if you won't do it, I'll ask for the one with the good storytelling. I admit it. I'm low-brow. I've got orbital ridges like a Neanderthal. I leave it to smarter people than me to say whether The Quiet Game has any literary merit, but I will say this, it's a ripping good story! Iles, like Stephen King, knows his way around plots, cagey heroes (get it?), sexy, spunky heroines, villains that make me grind my teeth, and a host of other characters who take interesting shape with a few, deft brush strokes of the pen (sorry, mixed a metaphor). This is one of a series of Penn Cage novels. Penn was once a district attorney in Texas, then a novelist, and by the time of The Quiet Game, he has returned to his parents' home in Natchez, Mississippi to help his daughter recover from the death of her mother. He hopes for a "quiet" time, but instead he gets entangled in the investigation of a Civil Rights Era murder. There's something I like in addition to the suspenseful plot and engaging characters, and that's the milieu of the South. I don't know anything about it. I've never lived there. I've lived in Vermont, the most homogeneous state in the U.S. It's really interesting to read about a town in Mississippi, and about the blacks and whites living in that town. It seems--to this outsider--that Iles knows his people well. He doesn't hide the conflict that exists between some blacks and some whites. He doesn't hide the conflict between some whites and some other whites or between some blacks and some other blacks. He doesn't hide the respect that exists between individual members of the races either. It doesn't stretch my belief to think that fictional Penn Cage's father cared equally for whites and blacks during his lifelong career as a physician in Natchez. It does stretch my mind to rub fictional shoulders with blacks and whites in a town that, a little over a 150 years ago, was a slave-holding center of the Deep South, but only because it's so foreign to me. I kind of like stretching my mind that way. It's one of the things I love about reading whether I've got a work of literature or just a darn good story. I like that stretch, that chance to see people and a part of the world I may never see on my own. Thanks, Greg Iles. I'd like to hear the Rock Bottom Remainders. Do you ever come to Vermont? Your friend, Alec Hastings.

Good story

Really enjoyed reading GregIles novel

The story reads like a true story. The information about real people, living or dead with such detail, leads one to believe the authenticity of this novel.

This was the first book I've read by Greg Iles. I kept thinking "this would make a great movie". It had a little of everything, good character's, dialog, mystery, surprises. I look forward to reading the next Penn Cage novel.

I accidentally read Natchez Burning first at the recommendation of a friend, who didn't mention it was actually book four in the Penn Cage series. Then I went back and started with book one, The Quiet Game, and it's very similar and just as good as Natchez Burning. They both center around Penn Cage, a lawyer, turned novelist, turned investigator, who takes up old civil rights cases for his personal cause. The next two books in the series vary from the historic/civil rights issues and deal with modern-day issues, but they are just as good. I'll review those later. The thing I love most (it's hard to pick) about Greg Iles and this series is the way he builds such highly complex characters. As a writer myself it makes me jealous, but it's very inspiring. You either totally love or totally hate the characters. And you only hate the characters you are supposed to hate.It's very hard to have so many characters in your story and keep them all so balanced and complex, but Greg Iles pulls this off as if it is no effort at all. The other thing I love most is his vivid descriptions of the settings. I've never been to Mississippi, but I feel like I have. Specifically Nathez. I can close my eyes and picture every single scene he creates. That, too, is very hard to do. Take my word for it. After reading this series, I'm going to make a more concerted effort to describe my settings as he does. As for the storyline, I hate it when people summarize the story on these reviews. What I look for in a review is whether or not the book/author is any good. Which is what I'm hoping to convey here. But I will tell you that in a nutshell, Penn Cage resurrects an old civil rights era murder and investigates it despite the mounting obstacles by the locals and small-town politicians. Of course, Iles is also good at creating several intriguing sub-plots (another difficult task for writers) that add to the story instead of distract from it. It's not a legal thriller at all, as some might think when they hear that the MC is a lawyer. Yes, there's a lot of dead-on legal knowledge included which he nails (I'm a paralegal...I know), but it's a far cry from John Grisham's quickly churned-out run-of-the-mill legal thrillers. This book almost leans toward literary in its style. Each book in the series could easily wind up being considered a "classic" one day in the future. His writing style is different, but in a way, Iles reminds me of John Steinbeck in his storytelling abilities. All in all, you will be very satisfied when you pick up this book and realize you don't want to put it down. I read it in a week or less even though it's a bit thick. There were several nights where I stayed up because I couldn't stop reading. That, to me, is the litmus test for a great book, and Iles passes with flying colors. Until I discovered Greg Iles, Stephen King was my writing idol. But I now believe King has met his match. The Quiet Game is an easy to read, but very complex, novel. Do yourself a favor and buy the entire series, because the minute you put down The Quiet Game, you'll want to immediately pick up The Turning Angel, then The Devil's Punchbowl, and on and on....