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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Copyright © Greg Iles 2017
Mannish Boy
Words and Music by McKinley Morganfield, Melvin London and Ellas McDaniel. Copyright © 1955 Arc Music Corp., Lonmel Publishing Inc. and Watertoons. Copyright Renewed. All Rights Administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover photographs © Christian Adams/Getty Images (bridge);
Shutterstock.com (figures, background).
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 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 authorâs imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007411320
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2017 ISBN: 9780007483501
Version: 2018-08-21
For the truth is a terrible thing. You dabble your foot in it and it is nothing. But you walk a little farther and you feel it pull you like an undertow or a whirlpool. First there is the slow pull so steady and gradual you scarcely notice it, then the acceleration, then the dizzy whirl and plunge into darkness. For there is a blackness of truth, too. They say it is a terrible thing to fall into the Grace of God. I am prepared to believe that.
âRobert Penn Warren, All the Kingâs Men
GRIEF IS THE most solitary emotion; it makes islands of us all.
Iâve spent a lot of time visiting graves over the past few weeks. Sometimes with Annie, but mostly alone. The people who see me there give me a wide berth. Iâm not sure why. For thirty miles around, almost everyone knows me. Penn Cage, the mayor of Natchez, Mississippi. When they avoid meâwaving from a distance, if at all, then hurrying on their wayâI sometimes wonder if I have taken on the mantle of death. Jewel Washington, the county coroner and a true friend, pulled me aside in City Hall last week and told me I look like living proof that ghosts exist. Maybe they do. Since Caitlin died, I have felt like nothing more than the ghost of myself.