Product Description

If anyone knows Death, Penn Cage does. He, himself, has sent 16 men to their fate as District Attorney, and killed one by his own hand. And now his beautiful young wife is gone too, leaving him alone with their young daughter. He decides to go home; home means Natchez, Mississippi, and the ghosts of his past. There he stumbles over a long-forgotten crime - the death of a black man in '68 - which could explain not only his own life, but that of the whole community. A community which seems to have been playing the quiet game for the last 30 years...

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9311 in Books
• Published on: 2000-07-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 608 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Successful novelist Penn Cage comes back to Natchez to recover--a long career as a prosecutor has left him with enemies on both sides of the law and he has been shattered by the death of his wife. A quixotic decision to talk frankly about the town's racial politics to Caitlin, an attractive woman journalist, means he is asked to investigate the long-ago murder of black civil rights worker Del Payton, and almost at once he is being threatened, cajoled and shot at. Cage finds his enquiries coming close to home--his doctor father has skeletons in his closet and Liv Marston, the high school sweetheart Cage loved and lost, comes back into his life the moment he starts investigating the activities and connections of her industrialist father.

Iles' Natchez is a superficially civilised rats nest of intrigue where everyone plays the quiet game:

White and black both. Everybody keeping quiet, making like things is sweet and easy, trying to fish that new plant in here. Nobody wants nobody digging into Del's killing. Nobody 'cept you...Del's killers is playing the quiet game too. They been playing it thirty years. Not even sweatin'. You got to make people nervous to win the quiet game...

Cage, a man driven by a mixture of justice and vengeance, is a convincing new hero from Iles, if one who comes with rather more back story than is always easy to assimilate. The eventual courtroom drama--Cage adopts the high-risk strategy of making Marson sue him for slander--is especially powerful. --Roz Kaveney

.
NEW REVIEW

Review
'An engrossing, page-turning ride' (Jeffery Deaver )

'Alarming, believable, and utterly consuming' (Dan Brown, on DARK MATTER )

'Mortal Fear is a fine piece of writing and a tremendous thriller. In it, technology knows its place - as fiction’s servant never its master' (Independent )

'Start with an irresistible plot, add a heavy dose of historical intrigue, mix a host of shadowy characters, just a dash of terror on very page ... and you have Spandau Phoenix, a scorching read' (John Grisham )

---

Customer Reviews

Similar to Grisham's first book
There are a few books that make you kind of sigh after finishing the last page. This is one of them. It is a vast book with believable characters and a plot that draws you emotionally. I remember feeling the same way after reading A Time To Kill by Grisham. I will now scour the bookshelves for his other books.

Forget Grisham - This book rules!
I don't know, how this guy is doing it, but anything that Mr. Iles publishes is an absolute top-notch! Quiet Game is no exception. Eventhough the start is a bit different (less action-packed) than his other books, the development of the plot and continuous twists & surprises make this a brilliant novel. So briliant that even after a 15-hour flight I had to stay up till 8AM to finish reading it. So much for Grisham's legal thrillers - "The Quiet Game" is just that much better! Get it.

A latecomer to an excellent writer
I've only just come across this author! My fault, I know! Having completed this novel, I am now reading 'Dead Sleep' - a sure sign I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Not being from Mississippi, the author conveyed, to me anyway, the underlying tension in a racially affected location. The story moves along and the characters are, in the main, very believable. The writing is well constructed and you do feel you want to keep on turning the page. There are plenty of twists and, although the ending is as expected, the enjoyment of watching the criminals fed into the justice system is really absorbing. My only criticism is that the witnesses seem to give in to our hero just a little too easily. Nevertheless, at the end, I rather felt I'd like to keep on with the principal characters; it's good I have his other novels waiting for me!