If anyone knows death, Penn Cage does. He has sent 16 men to their fate as District Attorney. And now his young wife is gone too, leaving him alone with their young daughter. He decides to go home, and home means facing the ghosts of his past

Turning Angel marks the long-awaited return of Penn Cage, the lawyer hero of The Quiet Game, and introduces Drew Elliott, the highly respected doctor who saved Penn's life in a hiking accident when they were boys. As two of the most prominent citizens of Natchez, Drew and Penn sit on the school board of their alma mater, St. Stephen's Prep. When the nude body of a young female student is found near the Mississippi River, the entire community is shocked – but no one more than Penn, who discovers that his best friend was entangled in a passionate relationship with the girl and may be accused of her murder. On the surface, Kate Townsend seems the most unlikely murder victim imaginable. A star student and athlete, she'd been accepted to Harvard and carried the hope and pride of the town on her shoulders. But like her school and her town, Kate also had a secret life – one about which her adult lover knew little. When Drew begs Penn to defend him, Penn allows his sense of obligation to override his instinct and agrees. Yet before he can begin, both men are drawn into a dangerous web of blackmail and violence. Drew reacts like anything but an innocent man, and Penn finds himself doubting his friend's motives and searching for a path out of harm's way. More dangerous yet is Shad Johnson, the black district attorney whose dream is to send a rich white man to death row in Mississippi. At Shad's order, Drew is jailed, the police cease hunting Kate's killer, and Penn realizes that only by finding Kate's murderer himself can he save his friend's life. With his daughter's babysitter as his guide, Penn penetrates the secret world of St. Stephen's, a place that parents never see, where reality veers so radically from appearance that Penn risks losing his own moral compass. St. Stephen's is a dark mirror of the adult world, one populated by steroid-crazed jocks, girls desperate for attention, jaded teens flirting with nihilism, and hidden among them all – one true psychopath. It is Penn's journey into the heart of his alma mater that gives Turning Angel its hypnotic power, for on that journey he finds that the intersection of the adult and nearly adult worlds is a dangerous place indeed. By the time Penn arrives at the shattering truth behind Kate Townsend's death, his quiet Southern town will never be the same

With his gift for crafting “a keep-you engaged- to-the-very-last-page thriller” (USA Today) at full throttle, Greg Iles brings back the unforgettable Penn Cage in this electrifying suspense masterpiece. A new day has dawned . . . but the darkest evils live forever in the murky depths of a Southern town. Penn Cage was elected mayor of Natchez, Mississippi—the hometown he returned to after the death of his wife—on a tide of support for change. Two years into his term, casino gambling has proved a sure bet for bringing new jobs and fresh money to this fading jewel of the Old South. But deep inside the Magnolia Queen, a fantastical repurposed steamboat, a depraved hidden world draws high-stakes players with money to burn on their unquenchable taste for blood sport and the dark vices that go with it. When an old high school friend hands him blood-chilling evidence, Penn alone must beat the odds tracking a sophisticated killer who counters his every move, placing those nearest to him—including his young daughter, his renowned physician father, and a lover from the past—in grave danger, and all at the risk of jeopardizing forever the town he loves. From Publishers Weekly Iles's third addition to the Penn Cage saga is an effective thriller that would have been even more satisfying at half its length. There is a lot of story to cover, with Cage now mayor of Natchez, Miss., battling to save his hometown, his family and his true love from the evil clutches of a pair of homicidal casino operators who are being protected by a homeland security bigwig. Dick Hill handles the large cast of characters effortlessly, adopting Southern accents that range from aristocratic (Cage and his elderly father) to redneck (assorted Natchez townsfolk). He provides the bad guys with their vocal flair, including an icy arrogance for the homeland security honcho, a soft Asian-tempered English for the daughter of an international villain and the rough Irish brogue of the two main antagonists. One of the latter pretends to be an upper-class Englishman and, in a moment of revelation, Hill does a smashing job of switching accents mid-sentence.