Greg Iles 3-Book Thriller Collection: The Quiet Game, Turning Angel, The Devil’s Punchbowl
The first three thrillers in the New York Times No.1bestselling series featuring Penn Cage: a man who must face the dark heart of the Deep South – and question everything he believes in . . .THE QUIET GAME: Penn Cage is no stranger to death. As a Houston prosecutor he’s sent sixteen men to death row – and now he’s lost his wife to cancer.Penn returns home to Natchez, Mississippi for a gentler life. But after discovering that his father is being blackmailed over a long-forgotten homicide, Penn is soon up to his neck in the town’s murky undercurrents of passion, power and racial tension.For this is a place with a dark past, where everyone plays the quiet game. But Penn cannot stay silent.TURNING ANGELS: Rape and murder aren’t new to the Deep South, but when the body of a popular high school girl is found dumped in the local river, the whole town of Natchez, Mississippi is shocked.Penn Cage no longer practises law, but when his best friend Drew is accused of the murder and asks for help, Penn must face the hardest questions of his life: Can he defend Drew against the town, the police and overwhelming evidence?Or could it be true that his friend is a brutal killer who has deceived Penn and everyone else?THE DEVIL’S PUNCHBOWL: When he was a prosecuting attorney Penn Cage sent hardened killers to death row. But it is as mayor of his hometown – Natchez, Mississippi – that Penn will face his most dangerous threat.Penn has ridden into office on a tide of support for change. But in its quest for new jobs and fresh money, Natchez has turned to casino gambling. Five fantastical steamboats float on the river, but one isn't like the others. Rumour has it that the Magnolia Queen has found a way to pull the big players from Las Vegas. With them comes an unquenchable taste for one thing: blood sport, and the dark vices that go with it.When a childhood friend of Penn's who brings him evidence is brutally murdered, the full weight of Penn's failure to protect this city hits home. So begins his quest to find the men responsible. And with his family's life at stake, Penn realizes his only allies in his one-man war are those bound to him by blood or honour.
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The Quiet Game
The Turning Angel
The Devil’s Punchbowl
Greg Iles
Harper
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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Copyright © Greg Iles 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Greg Iles asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
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Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Ebook Edition © February 2015 ISBN: 9780008108649
Version: 2015-02-11
Contents
GREG ILES
The Quiet Game
For
Madeline and Mark Who will always be my best work. And Anna Flowers Who taught me about class in every sense.
Be not deceived; God is not mocked:
For whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap.
—GALATIANS 6:7
Contents
I am standing in line for Walt Disney’s It’s a Small World ride, holding my four-year-old daughter in my arms, trying to entertain her as the serpentine line of parents and children moves slowly toward the flat-bottomed boats emerging from the grotto to the music of an endless audio loop. Suddenly Annie jerks taut in my arms and points into the crowd.
“Daddy! I saw Mama! Hurry!”
I do not look. I don’t ask where. I don’t because Annie’s mother died seven months ago. I stand motionless in the line, looking just like everyone else except for the hot tears that have begun to sting my eyes.
Annie keeps pointing into the crowd, becoming more and more agitated. Even in Disney World, where periodic meltdowns are common, her fit draws stares. Clutching her struggling body against mine, I work my way back through the line, which sends her into outright panic. The green metal chutes double back upon themselves to create the illusion of a short queue for prospective riders. I push past countless staring families, finally reaching the relative openness between the Carousel and Dumbo.
Holding Annie tighter, I rock and turn in slow circles as I did to calm her when she was an infant. A streaming mass of teenagers breaks around us like a river around a rock and pays us about as much attention. A claustrophobic sense of futility envelops me, a feeling I never experienced prior to my wife’s illness but which now dogs me like a malignant shadow. If I could summon a helicopter to whisk us back to the Polynesian Resort, I would pay ten thousand dollars to do it. But there is no helicopter. Only us. Or the less-than-us that we’ve been since Sarah died.
The vacation is over. And when the vacation is over, you go home. But where is home? Technically Houston, the suburb of Tanglewood. But Houston doesn’t feel like home anymore. The Houston house has a hole in it now. A hole that moves from room to room.
The thought of Penn Cage helpless would shock most people who know me. At thirty-eight years old, I have sent sixteen men and women to death row. I watched seven of them die. I’ve killed in defense of my family. I’ve given up one successful career and made a greater success of another. I am admired by my friends, feared by my enemies, loved by those who matter. But in the face of my child’s grief, I am powerless.
Taking a deep breath, I hitch Annie a little higher and begin the long trek back to the monorail. We came to Disney World because Sarah and I brought Annie here a year ago—before the diagnosis—and it turned out to be the best vacation of our lives. I hoped a return trip might give Annie some peace. But the opposite has happened. She rises in the middle of the night and pads into the bathroom in search of Sarah; she walks the theme parks with darting eyes, always alert for the vanished maternal profile. In the magical world of Disney, Annie believes Sarah might step around the next corner as easily as Cinderella. When I patiently explained that this could not happen, she reminded me that Snow White rose from the dead just like Jesus, which in her four-year-old brain is indisputable fact. All we have to do is
