Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Iles wraps up his massively ambitious Natchez Burning trilogy with a book that is (in keeping with its predecessors) compelling, dark, surprising, and morally ambiguous. Its hero, Penn Cage, has done things that might be considered reprehensible, but in these circumstances—his father about to stand trial for a murder he might very well have committed; his fiancée having been recently murdered; and his family's lives in jeopardy—we can understand why Penn steps outside the normal boundaries of acceptable behavior in his pursuit of the truth about his father and about the Double Eagles, a white-supremacist organization with a deep connection to the history of Mississippi and to Penn's own family. Familiarity with the first two books in the trilogy, Natchez Burning (2014) and The Bone Tree (2015), isn't a requirement here—the author has devised a very clever way of bringing readers up to speed—but, even so, there are some plot threads and references to previous events that might be missed by those jumping into the story in midstream. With these three novels, Iles has told an epic story that rips apart the modern history of Mississippi (he lives in Natchez himself), exposing a secret underbelly that, while fictional, feels real enough to have actually happened. This trilogy is destined to become a classic of literary crime fiction. Copyright 2017 Booklist Reviews.
Library Journal Reviews
In the first two volumes of Iles's New York Times best-selling trilogy "Natchez Burning," small-town white Southern lawyer Penn Cage learned that his physician father stands accused of murdering his former African American nurse and is somehow linked to a particularly vicious branch of the KKK. With his father still refusing his assistance, Penn teams up with Serenity Butler, a high-profile African American woman in town to write a book about his father's case. With a 400,000-copy first printing.. Copyright 2016 Library Journal.
Library Journal Reviews
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. Copyright 2016 Library Journal.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
Both unwieldy and tightly controlled, bestseller Iles's terrific conclusion to his Natchez Burning trilogy (after 2015's