Mississippi Blood

The #1 New York Times Bestseller

GoodReads Choice Award semi finalist, Amazon Best Mysteries & Thrillers of 2017 selection

The final installment in the epic Natchez Burning trilogy by Greg Iles

"Natchez Burning is extraordinarily entertaining and fiendishly suspenseful. I defy you to start it and find a way to put it down; as long as it is, I wished it were longer.... This is an amazing work of popular fiction." - Stephen King

"One of the longest, most successful sustained works of popular fiction in recent memory... Prepare to be surprised. Iles has always been an exceptional storyteller, and he has invested these volumes with an energy and sense of personal urgency that rarely, if ever, falter."

- Washington Post

The endgame is at hand for Penn Cage, his family, and the enemies bent on destroying them in this revelatory volume in the epic trilogy set in modern-day Natchez, Mississippi-Greg Iles's epic tale of love and honor, hatred and revenge that explores how the sins of the past continue to haunt the present.

Shattered by grief and dreaming of vengeance, Penn Cage sees his family and his world collapsing around him. The woman he loves is gone, his principles have been irrevocably compromised, and his father, once a paragon of the community that Penn leads as mayor, is about to be tried for the murder of a former lover. Most terrifying of all, Dr. Cage seems bent on self-destruction. Despite Penn's experience as a prosecutor in major murder trials, his father has frozen him out of the trial preparations-preferring to risk dying in prison to revealing the truth of the crime to his son.

During forty years practicing medicine, Tom Cage made himself the most respected and beloved physician in Natchez, Mississippi. But this revered Southern figure has secrets known only to himself and a handful of others. Among them, Tom has a second son, the product of an 1960s affair with his devoted African American nurse, Viola Turner. It is Viola who has been murdered, and her bitter son-Penn's half-brother-who sets in motion the murder case against his father. The resulting investigation exhumes dangerous ghosts from Mississippi's violent past. In some way that Penn cannot fathom, Viola Turner was a nexus point between his father and the Double Eagles, a savage splinter cell of the KKK. More troubling still, the long-buried secrets shared by Dr. Cage and the former Klansmen may hold the key to the most devastating assassinations of the 1960s. The surviving Double Eagles will stop at nothing to keep their past crimes buried, and with the help of some of the most influential men in the state, they seek to ensure that Dr. Cage either takes the fall for them, or takes his secrets to an early grave.

Unable to trust anyone around him-not even his own mother-Penn joins forces with Serenity Butler, a famous young black author who has come to Natchez to write about his father's case. Together, Penn and Serenity battle to crack the Double Eagles and discover the secret history of the Cage family and the South itself, a desperate move that risks the only thing they have left to gamble: their lives.

Mississippi Blood is the enthralling conclusion to a breathtaking trilogy seven years in the making-one that has kept readers on the edge of their seats. With piercing insight, narrative prowess, and a masterful ability to blend history and imagination, Greg Iles illuminates the brutal history of the American South in a highly atmospheric and suspenseful novel that delivers the shocking resolution his fans have eagerly awaited.

Editorial Reviews

*01/23/2017 Both unwieldy and tightly controlled, bestseller Iles's terrific conclusion to his Natchez Burning trilogy (after 2015's The Bone Tree) is a sweeping story that remains intimate. The Double Eagles, a savage KKK splinter group, have declared a personal war on Penn Cage, a former prosecutor who's now the mayor of Natchez, Miss., necessitating 24-hour security protection for him and his family. The toxic bigotry escalates as Penn's father, Tom, once a respected physician, goes on trial for the murder of his former nurse and one-time lover, Viola Turner, an African-American who was suffering from terminal cancer. Penn teams with Serenity Butler, a famous black author who plans to write about Tom's case. Together, they look into the secrets of the Cage family, the Double Eagles, and the South. Though a side plot about J.F.K.'s assassination stretches credibility, relentless pacing keeps the story churning, with unexpected brutality erupting on nearly every page. The trial scenes are among the most exciting ever written in the genre. Eight-city author tour. Agents: Dan Conaway and Simon Lipskar, Writers House. (Mar.) - Publishers Weekly

*12/01/2016 Snake Knox, the most sadistic member of the white supremacist terrorist group known as the Double Eagles, has taken the helm, and will do anything to keep the truth hidden. His all-out assault on Penn Cage and his family and friends ratchets up as the murder trial of Penn's father gets underway. Desperate to save Dr. Tom Cage from being convicted of killing his former nurse, Viola Turner, Penn and soldier-turned-author Serenity Butler race to uncover witnesses. The danger for Penn and anyone connected to him intensifies to the extreme as he battles to expose the truth of the decades of atrocities committed by Snake and the Double Eagles. Flowing throughout, the courage and bravery of those who encounter violence born of racial intolerance is continuously tested. VERDICT From his opening line, Iles draws you back into Penn Cage's deep South in this phenomenal trilogy's final novel (after Natchez Burning; The Bone Tree). His heart-racing, enthralling thriller brings to the forefront the racial divisiveness that still plagues this country. [See Prepub Alert, 9/26/16; eight-city tour.]--Joy Gunn, Paseo Verde Lib., Henderson, NV - Library Journal

2016-12-26 Delta whodunit master Iles (The Bone Tree, 2015, etc.) brings his politically charged, timely trilogy of Mississippi murder and mayhem to a thunderous close.Life for Penn Cage is never a bowl of cherries. A bucket of blood, more like it. As this last installment in the Natchez Burning trilogy opens, he's in a bloodier mess than ever, depressed, full of bitter self-awareness: "When someone you love is murdered," he reflects, "you learn things about yourself you'd give a great deal not to know." Other questions loom. Why is his jailed father stubbornly clinging to a secret guaranteed to shake up otherwise sleepy Natchez? Now that the Klan-on-steroids villains have come under new management, what kind of awful mischief are they going to make for the place--and how do they figure in that secret, anyway? To begin to answer those questions, Iles swings full circle back into the territory of the first volume and its unlikely archive of once-forbidden, even now fraught interracial relationships; "anyone in possession of those ledgers," Penn reveals, "would never have to worry about money again, so valuable would they be as a blackmail tool." No, but there are plenty of other things to worry about, things that make the normally even-keeled Penn feel not so bad about shooting a bad guy in the back, "where I know his heart is pumping violently." Iles mostly sticks to the format of the hard-boiled procedural, though there's some nicely wrought courtroom drama here, too, with a none-too-subtle dig at a fellow Southern mysterian: "The why doesn't come into it. That's for John Grisham and the Law & Order writers to worry about." Speedboats, bullets, and floods of the red stuff fly and flow, wrapping up to a clean conclusion--though with the slightest hint of an out, in case Iles decides to stretch the trilogy into another book or two. Faulkner meets John D. MacDonald, and that's all to the good. A boisterous, spills-and-chills entertainment from start to finish. - Kirkus Reviews

Natchez Burning obliterates the artificial distinction between genre and literary fiction with passion, grace, and considerable style. This is Greg Iles at this formidable best. It's good to have him back. - Washington Post

Natchez Burning is extraordinarily entertaining and fiendishly suspenseful. I defy you to start it and find a way to put it down; as long as it is, I wished it were longer.... This is an amazing work of popular fiction. - Stephen King

While Natchez Burning excels as a contemporary thriller, it shines brightest when Iles draws from a deeper, and older, well in American fiction. The most compelling passages of the novel echo Iles' writer-predecessor from Natchez, Richard Wright... Utterly-and chillingly-believable. Epic. - Clarion-Ledger (Jackson

It matches, or even outdoes, the first story in excitement and drama... A searing saga of remorse and revenge. - Huffington Post on The Bone Tree

This trilogy is destined to become a classic of literary crime fiction. - Booklist (starred review)

A superb entertainment that is a work of power, distinction and high seriousness... also (a) prime example of what the thriller-and other forms of so-called ‘genre' fiction-can accomplish when pushed beyond traditional limits. - Washington Post on Mississippi Blood

One of the longest, most successful sustained works of popular fiction in recent memory... Prepare to be surprised. Iles has always been an exceptional storyteller, and he has invested these volumes with an energy and sense of personal urgency that rarely, if ever, falter. - Denver Post on Mississippi Blood

There is a graphic beauty to Iles' writing. He uses measured words to express voluminous stories.... He is a masterful storyteller! - Huffington Post on Mississippi Blood

[The books] are page-turning entertainments with an edge of history and a deep understanding of race relations in the American South.... Mississippi Blood is packed with compelling characters.... Harrowing and spellbinding. - Pittsburg Post-Gazette

Iles draws his characters so well, and brings off scenes so deftly. - Houston Chronicle on Mississippi Blood

A fabulous story.... Love, betrayal, murder, sadness, racism, adultery, hatred and revenge, with a bit of history thrown in.... The conclusion to a phenomenal trilogy. - Biloxi Sun Herald on Mississippi Blood

In this dramatic conclusion to a stunning piece of work, Iles works suspense until the last second, making us question whether we'd be able to keep fighting if all the precious things in our lives were taken away. - Southern Living on Mississippi Blood

The Natchez trilogy is a sprawling plunge into some of the worst crimes of the civil-rights era. - Knoxville News-Sentinel on Mississippi Blood

This magnificent saga concludes in breathtaking fashion.... Tender and gripping. - RT Book Reviews on Mississippi Blood

The breathtaking ending to an expertly crafted trilogy.... Page-turning suspense. Well-written and a must read. - CriminalElement.com

Almost nobody works in crime fiction at this level-or this many levels-of psychological, social, and civic sharpness, and with this clarity as well as richness of style. And maintains fiendish levels of suspense. - Sullivan County Democrat on Mississippi Blood

Operatic in its reach, this is still essentially a tough crime procedural, with courtroom drama that is far more blistering than the John Grisham variety. - Financial Times on Mississippi Blood

Just when the trial seems to be ending there are more twists and turns that I never saw coming.... A great ending for the final installment of this thrilling novel. When I read the last page all I could say was WOW! Iles never disappoints. - ReaderToReader.com

Prepare to be surprised. Iles has always been an exceptional storyteller, and he has invested these volumes with an energy and sense of personal urgency that rarely, if ever, falter. - Denver Post

[The books] are page-turning entertainments with an edge of history and a deep understanding of race relations in the American South.... Mississippi Blood is packed with compelling characters.... Harrowing and spellbinding. - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette