Greg Iles

Yes, it's 800 pages. And, yes, all 800 pages comprise just the first of a proposed three-volume trilogy. No matter: read the first page of "Natchez Burning" and you're hooked and you'll stay that way and, when all 800 pages are been devoured - where did the time go?! - you'll be demanding Iles deliver volume two at top speed. This is the latest Iles novel starring Natchez mayor Penn Cage, whose lifelong hero and role model is his incredibly honorable and kind father, Dr. Tom Cage. But then Dr. Cage, very ill with heart disease, is accused of murdering his long ago nurse, Violet Turner. Considering that Cage is white and Turner is black, and that they worked together in Mississippi during the height of the Civil Rights movement, the accusation rekindles long-smoldering issues of racial hatred involving the Double Eagles, a secret and stunningly vicious Klan offshoot whose membership rolls extend to the most powerful corridors of Natchez and New Orleans. There are multiple plot threads and flawed heroes and cunning villains - and Iles blends them all together in a jarringly unflinching story of family, secrets, power and political and cultural mania.

- RICK KOSTER