Don’t know what I’m doing in my dotage. I downloaded these guys virtually one after the other and hardly put them down till they were finished. Greg Iles is a master of the page turner, leaving you at the end of the page aching to find out what’s on the next. And he creates nice characters and super situations. Each book has a little message or group of messages to deliver. Blood Memory is about child abuse and recovered memory; Turning Angel is about high school drugs and sex and how ignorant and foolish adults are in action and attitude; The Devil’s Punchbowl inveighs against sex slavery, dog fighting, and municipal corruption. Each one also makes use of some arcane piece of technology by someone fair or foul.
Interestingly, though his bio says he played music for a long time, there’s little live music in the books. He is, however, the only Writer Working Author to be pictured with a music star. You see him with James Taylor on the right. Quite a number of references to songs, but no bands, musicians, singers, concerts. Also interestingly, the novels are set in and around Natchez, Mississippi with all its history, ugy and gorgeous as it is. Blood Memory folks spend a lot of time in New Orleans, but most of the meaty stuff is in Natchez. I like that aspect, having spent a little time there. Totally entrancing place, and you’ll never forget the views from the Natchez bluffs across the Mississippi to the Louisiana flatlands.
You’ll also never forget the pell-mell rush of time with a Greg Isles novel. There’s nothing junky about these things, but nothing too literary either. Just solid popular fiction it’s hard for a guy to put down.
