With 19 novels (usually long) and 1 novella to his name, Greg Isles has been writing some of the grittiest Southern fiction on the market. I’ve read books by him before, but Natchez Burning is one of the best to date and I’d been looking forward to it for quite awhile but for some reason …???  And now I look forward to The Bone Tree which is the 2nd book in the Natchez Burning series.  

There are a lot of characters and this page is very helpful for all but the minor ones: 

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Natchez Burning
By Greg Iles
2015 
Read by Robert Petcoff 32h 17m
Rating: A++ (Suspense-Thriller) 
(Historical fiction – Southern Noir) 

Greg Isles writes about the South because that’s where he and his family are from – he also went to the University of Mississippi.  I think he has a love/hate relationship with the South, but love keeps winning out. (JUST my uncritical o.) 

This book took me almost 5 days to read and except for breaks to eat and sleep and take care of some necessary stuff, I went straight through – hooked into it so bad I barely allowed myself to get up for a refill of coffee.  LOL!

Iles has written about Doctor Tom Cage and his son Penn Cage for years – maybe 15 books?  I’ve read a half dozen so far – they’re sometimes over-the-top in terms of violence – for me, anyway.  Natchez Burning took that violence right to the brink.  

 Penn Cage, the protagonist and 1st person narrator in many sections, is a 30-something attorney and sheriff of Natchez.  He’s also a widower with a lovely 8-year old daughter, and a fiancé named Caitlin Morris. Caitlin is an excellent and well-known newspaper reporter but she’s very ambitious. Doctor Tom Cage Penn’s father, is in his 80s now and not quite retired yet.. He’s been a blessing to the town since he got out of the military.    

A woman who, long ago, was Doctor Cage’s nurse is in the final stages of cancer but comes back to Natchez so he can help her with treatments. She dies and the rumor is that Dr Cage killed her. Dr Cage is a hero in Natchez and most folks think his killing anyone is preposterous.  But this situation has a very tangled backstory with race issues and drugs along with political corruption and so on.  

There is an old scandal involving the deaths of many black men and women by members of the Ku Klux Klan which has been replenished by younger white men over the decades and they have contributed to the ongoing scandal including the death of the woman who comes to see Dr. Cage. 

These websites were very helpful re characters and backgrounds. https://bobsmithsblog.com/2017/11/16/greg-iles-natchez-burning-vol-1-of-trilogy-a-book-report/
htps://www.gregiles.com/how-greg-writes
https://www.gregiles.com

And just to make things fun … I started The Bone Tree, Book 2 in the trilogy, about an hour after I finished Book 1. The story line picks up in the Prologue of Book 2. I guess I’m glued for another few days – and then there’s Book 3, Mississippi Blood.