The Devil's Punchbowl

The Devil's Punchbowl
© 2009 Greg Iles
592 pages

"This town is under siege, and the biggest threat always comes from within."

Recently I read an interview with David Mack, in which he stated that good drama comes from putting mature characters through hell -- repeatedly. In fact, Mack said, you can tell his favorite characters by those who his plots abuse the most.  If Iles takes the same attitude, he must adore Penn Gage. Gage, once a big-city district attorney and now a successful author, returned to his family home  in Natchez, Mississippi following the death of his wife (The Quiet Game) and has in succeeding novels (Turning Angel) fought corruption and crime in his beloved hometown. Deciding to take a more active approach in reversing Natchez's decline, Penn runs for mayor and wins: people regard him as a good man, a hero in self-serving times. Heroes aren't immune to disappointment and frustration, though: after two years in office Cage realizes Natchez's problems are too big for one man to handle and he wants to step down.  A friend approaching him on the eve of a busy weekend about casino riverboat fraud is the last thing he needs  -- but when his friend is savagely tortured and killed a day later,  a once-simple case of fraud becomes a life and death struggle with Penn's family, friends, and town hanging in the balance.

Sinister goings-on aboard the riverboat casino Magnolia Queen were never limited to tax fraud, for when Cage and his friend first met in a quiet cemetery the first night of the novel, Cage saw pictures to make a man's blood run cold:  photos which documented both underage prostitution and  a vicious dog-fighting circuit run by the dark character of Johnathan Sands, the Queen's general manager who switches between a posh English accent and a working-class Irish brogue at the drop of a hat and who will kill a man's family just as easily. Sands and his lackey Quinn feed on the pain of others, and they target Penn after realizing he knows more about them than they'd like. Cage assumed nailing Sands for fraud would be the most effective way of taking him down, but now that Gage is a target he'll need to work in the dark. Surviving their plans for him will require the assistance of friends -- a grizzled Texas Ranger, a retired Army commando, and a combat pilot for starters; the later two have made appearances in The Quiet Game and Third Degree.

Devil's Punchbowl is easily the most violent of Iles' books that I've read: the villains' chief interests are training killer dogs, torture, and rape. Dominant themes include the familiar (heroism & sacrifice) and the struggle between brutality and idealism. Iles uses the fascination with violence and gore to depict humans as instinctively savage creature, with Sands and Quinn being complete monsters. Penn and his allies struggle with their own conflicting desires: idealists like Penn and his old girlfriend, the journalist Caitlin Masters, want to bring Sands to justice.  Others in their party think it necessary to deal with Sands on his own terms: "I think Johnathan Sands has become a one-bullet problem." Penn must defeat the monster without becoming the monster.

As usual, Iles' work is rich in background: the old-south mystique haunts the reader even as Penn is soaring through the air in a helicopter or using his 'Star Trek' satellite phone to coordinate actions with his allies. There are also plot turns, although they're not quite as gut-wrenching as in prior novels, and Penn is as ever a sympathetic character. He struggles with his desire to do the right thing, knowing it endangers his young daughter. Is Natchez worth his daughter? His father?

Punchbowl is a gripping read, with plenty of action for those who want it. The themes are provocative, and the main protagonists compelling. Readers will be out for Sands' blood by book's end, and the scenes of his pleasures are not for the faint of heart.

In the Footprints of God

In the Footprints of God

© 2003 Greg Iles

459 pages

The saying Deus ex machina, literally translated as "god from the machine", refers to a plot device in which a superman power is used to suddenly resolve the conflict that drives plot. This could refer to all manner of things, but by extension it happens when the characters suddenly reveal something that stops the plot cold. In a way, it renders the entire story preceding it pointless. But literally, "god from the machine" -- that's an interesting phrase.

David Tennant is in quite a situation. He's been asked by the President of the United States, a friend of his brother's, to provide ethical oversight to a government program that will dwarf the Manhattan Project in importance if its goals are realized. The Trinity project seeks to create artificial -- nay, super-intelligence. By combing the reasoning and imaginative powers of the human mind with the processing speed of a supercomputer functioning at quantum levels, the Trinity program intends to create a computer that will make existing computers look like like abacuses in comparison. Given the controversy over the Manhattan Project about the use of nuclear weapons, the US President has decided to cover his posterior here by having ethical oversight.

So what happens when people start dying for trying to suspend the project so that problems of a serious nature can be investigated? You end up with a classic Hollywood movie plot: the compassionate doctor who knows too much being chased through the country, hounded by an amoral Government Agency and nearly killed by German mercenaries who only show emotion when they want to terrify you. If that sounds typical or even generic, keep reading: that isn't the end of the story. That only sets up the bulk of the novel, and it will bring Deus ex machina to mind -- but not yet.

David Tennant's story is told through the first-person, and his voice tells most of the story -- although curiously enough Iles does switch to third-person limited and focuses on the amoral government agency's security chief to tell the first part of the story from the vantage point of both pursued and pursuer. Later, she will fade, but the third-person will be used for two other characters. Tennant and his friend Dr. Fielding are responsible for stopping one of the most expensive government programs to date (save for wars) on the basis that scanning equipment related to the plot is causing brain dysfunctions among test subjects, including our own David Tennant -- who frequently dreams that he is seeing the history of the world through the eyes of God, and the history of Jesus through the eyes of Jesus. What makes this interesting is that Tennant is nonreligious: he's an atheist who would probably attach the humanist label to himself in the same way that Penn Cage did in The Quiet Game and Turning Angel.

This and the potential of the planned supercomputer (Deus ex machina) make a science fiction novel address metaphysics, but not in a "New Age" way. In Turning Angel I was impressed by Iles' ability to render characters of various skeptical bents and religious affiliations believable, and this continues here. Although Iles' characters do talk about God and the God-idea does feature in the plot, it is close to Contact. While I've never read The Tao of Physics, I've gotten a sense of its reputation from skeptics and my own skeptical sensibilities were not offended.

The book is quite strong: Iles has rendered another thriller, this one most interesting in touching on metaphysical issues. Unlike some of his previous works (Turning Angel again), violence and elaborate descriptions of sex are fairly absent. Although Iles could have easily shot himself in the foot writing about sensitive issues such as these -- religion, namely -- I don't think he does. This may be his most riveting book yet.

Sleep No More

Sleep No More

© 2002 Greg Iles

382 pages

Circumstances warranting my reading a third Greg Iles this book , which is a bit unusual. I have in times past read two books in one week by the same author, but I think reading multiple books by the same author in the same genre is a first. Iles makes it easy: his books are thrillers, genuine page turners. I can hammer through one in one day and not feel fatigued in the least. Sleep No More was the Iles book I'd intended to begin the week with, but my sister checked it out before I could and so I read Third Degree instead. As it happens, though, I'm babysitting for her and have her library books available for reading as well as mine.

Sleep No More is set in Natchez, Mississippi, as were The Quiet Game and Third Degree. Unlike the former Natchez books, however, this is not a first-person Penn Cage narrative. The book is written in the third person, and from the perspective of a husband and wife whose lives are thrown into confusion and chaos shortly after their daughter's victorious soccer game. Was it the underdog team winning that threw the universe into chaos? No. Instead, a woman named Eve Sumner walks by main character John Waters and whispers in his ear a phrase known only to him and his college love -- a woman whose passions consumed his life, in ways both good and bad. That was a love ended by her rape and death at the hands of unknown strangers in New Orleans.

Eve -- and through her his former love Mallory -- begin to haunt John. When he confronts Eve about the mystery phrase, she enrages him by telling him that she is his former love -- come back from the dead. Such was the effect of Mallory on John during his college days that Eve has resurrection his obsession with her, and together they begin an affair even as John struggles with the truth of the matter. Is she really the soul of his former -- and now present -- love, or is this some elaborate scheme? His friend Penn Cage -- hello, Penn, fancy seeing you here -- seems to think so. Cage is not a believer in the supernatural, and he believes that Waters' corrupt business partner Cole is trying to disrupt Water's life in some way for his own selfish benefit. Things only grow more mysterious after Eve dies and Waters' wife Lily begins acting like a woman posessed.

The book is a thriller: its opening premise is quite interesting, and Iles executes the tension well. I did not expect the plot to go the way it did. Like his previous offering, Sleep No More does not fail to entertain, although after three books of his in the same week, I am (understandably) growing weary of Iles' sexy southern gothics. A break may be recquired.

Turning Angel

Turning Angel

© 2005 Greg Iles

501 pages

I didn't intend to read two books by Greg Iles this week: frankly, I don't want to exhaust my library's Iles collection prematurely. As it happens, I finished Third Degree much more quickly than I anticipated and -- as I happened to be at my sister's house babysitting, and as she is similarly working her way through Iles -- I decided to read from one of her checked-out Iles books. Turning Angel, like The Quiet Game, is a first-person thriller written from the eyes of Penn Gage, Houston prosecutor-turned-novelist. Turning Angel is set five years after the conclusion of The Quiet Game, but in the same town of Natchez, Mississippi. Gage's hometown -- to which he returned after the death of his wife -- has deteriorated somewhat in those five years, as its major manufacturing employers have left, leaving the town with only tourism as its only viable source of income.

On the May afternoon that this book begins, though, such things are not on the minds of its citizens, particularly not those whose children go to St. Stephen's Preparatory school, which is approaching its graduation ceremonies. The quiet anticipation is broken, however, when the body of a St. Stephen's senior washes up on a creekbed in town -- murdered. Victim Kate Townsend was a Natchez celebrety, headed for Harvard and the darling of the preparatory school. Her death is shocking enough, but soon rumors spread that Gage's best friend and respected physician, Drew Elliot, was engaged in a romantic relationship with the not-quite-eighteen year old.

The plot-driving tension begins to build when Elliot asks Gage to once again pick up the lawyery banner and defend him against charges of sexual battery and murder -- but things are not as simple as they might appear. The book's title, Turning Angel, comes from a statue in town that seems to turn on its pedestal as pedestrians and cars pass nearby, its eyes following them. Appearances are not reality, and this Gage realizes as he sits in his car following the murder of a local police office with whom he was talking: the then-latest murder in a string of nearly a dozen murders that will result in a matter of days when the book's plot is nearing its climax. The murders appear to be drug-related -- but what does Kate Townsend have to do with drug lords from Biloxi?

While Gage investigates matters to build a defense of his friend, he finds he must contend with race politics -- a theme repeated from The Quiet Game, but unfortunately true to real life -- and the sexual nature of high school culture. The book, like Iles' other novels I've read, moves quickly and never loses my interest -- although I liked this less than the others, chiefly because the sex seemed to be gratuitous after a while. If I were introducing someone to Iles, I would recommend something else as a first read. What did impress me was how many voices Gage had to assume in writing this book: an agnostic novelist, a fundamentalist preacher, a liberal Shelby-Spong-type preacher, a high school senior trying to talk to the novelist about the role of sex in high school culture, and more. What is most striking -- especially when reading a eulogy given by the liberal preacher -- was that he does this well. Granted, Iles consults with people in writing, but that he is able to render believable impressions of people who are so different from one another speaks highly to me of his writing ability.

On page 205, Gage consults with a civil rights lawyer from the 1960s about the declining quality of leadership among American blacks, and he says something interesting. Remember that this is written in 2005:

"There's a crisis of black leadership in this country, Penn. The leaders of my era are relics of another age. A lost age, I'm sorry to say. [...] You've basically got three types of black leaders today. There's the managerial type, who pretends race isn't even an issue. He wants a large white constituency, but he also wants to keep the loyal blacks behind him. [...] Then you have your black protest leader. He's black, loud, and proud. He casts himself in the image Malcolm and Martin, but deep down he's nothing like them. He uses the ideals of those greater leaders only to get what he wants: personal status and power. Marion Barry, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan -- the list is endless. They're flashy, powerful, and dangerous. [...] [The third type is] the prophetic leader. That's Martin, Malcolm....Ellie Baker. The current generation has produced no leaders of this type, much less of that caliber. I'm watching Bara[c]k Obama, but I'm not sure yet."

Third Degree

Third Degree

© 2007 Greg Iles

385 pages

After being utterly captivated by The Quiet Game last week, reading more of Iles was a foregone conclusion. Although I had intended to read the fantasy-like Sleep No More, my sister -- who introduced me to Iles -- currently has the book checked out, and so I went with his Third Degree. Unlike The Quiet Game, Third Degree is written in the third person. What is most remarkable about the book, I think, is that its entire plot takes place within the span of one day -- one day in a suburban household that begins on a slightly unusual note but which ends with a body floating in the river and a destroyed helicopter. The story is told primarily through the eyes of Laurel Shields -- a special needs teacher whose household will be become a warzone as the plot develops -- and Danny McDavitt, a retired combat pilot who now gives flight lessons and who has recently broken off a year-long affair with Laurel. (One other character develops a voice after the plot thickens.)

That Laurel has been engaged in an affair is one secret, but her husband Warren has skeletons in his closet as well, skeletons that will lead to arson and hospitalized federal agents -- but today is when both secrets will come to the surface with terrifying and (for some) deadly results. Iles skillfully interweaves a marital drama with a crime-and-punishment police drama to create a story that recquires both to create a "perfect storm" of sorts. The result is also something of a psychological drama, as one of the characters goes through a developing mental hell that forces the reader to constantly reform how they perceive him. The book was as riveting as The Quiet Game, if not as textured: this was shorter and felt more like a Grisham-esque thriller. I enjoyed it tremendously.

The Quiet Game

The Quiet Game
© 1999 Greg Iles
576 pages

Caitlin Masters: "God, I'm trapped in a Southern gothic novel!" (p. 204)

Wow. I have rarely been as transfixed by a book as I have in the past two days while reading The Quiet Game. The book is my sister's, and she recommended and lent it to me, describing it as somewhat similar to John Grisham. Her more extended description matched that: she told me that it was the story of a lawyer turned novelist who returned to his hometown -- the small but storied town of Natchez, Mississippi -- and found himself involved in a mystery of sorts that required him to become a servant of the law once more.

We're introduced to Penn Gage as he stands in line in Disneyworld, trying not to cry in public because his four-year-old claims that she just saw her recently deceased mother in the crowd. Gage loved his wife, and her memory haunts him. "Haunting" is a word that can be applied to much of the book's plot and atmosphere. Gage decides to return to his parents' home so that he and his daughter Annie can adjust to life without their beloved Sarah, only to find that his father is being blackmailed by a thug. Thomas Gage, Penn's father, is far too good of a man to be humiliated like this, and Penn decides to take action -- not knowing that this issue, as important as it seems to him and the reader for the first hundred pages, is going to be rendered trivial. A casual remark to the town's newest reporter -- Caitlin Masters, whose wealthy daddy has just purchased the local newspaper and who is anxious to make a name for herself in investigative journalism -- dredges up a murder from 1968: the murder of Del Payton, a local civil rights leader whose killers were never found. Or...were they?

Masters promptly publishes the remark, and Payton's family comes forth. In a town with deep-seated but devotedly ignored racial tensions, the Gages are the rare white family that seems to give a damn about Natchez's marginalized black population. They ask Penn Gage to find out what happened to Del, to give his spirit rest. He regretfully declines them at first, but when more ghosts arise he finds himself drawn toward the case when the name of "Judge" Leo Marston, a powerful politician who has the town and apparently much of the state in his pocket, is somehow connected to the crime. Marston's elegant daughter - Livy Marston, an extraordinarily fantastic creature -- was Penn Gage's first and greatest love, and the Judge ruined that relationship and nearly destroyed Gage's father when Martson pursued a dramatic lawsuit against him. At first, Gage seeks to destroy Marston to get him back for ruining his and his father's life -- but as the plot develops, he will rediscover the passion for justice he lost when he removed himself from the law and the passion for life he lost when his wife passed away.

This is one book with a lot of layers: we have the plot-driving mutual hatred between the Marston and Gages, a romantic story that develops when Livy Martson returns to town and throws Gage into the past and the what-could-have-been (further agitating him against her father), the action element (which kept my attention even though I tend to scan over action sequences, pausing only if a character gets hurt), almost a dozen secondary characters struggling with personal demons that all relate to the plot, and the legal battle that ties everything together and ends lastly. All this is tied together gorgeously: I could not leave the book be, I had to keep reading it, and when it finally ended and I saw the last period I was hit with the feeling of hearing the echo of a symphony that just finished.

What is so appealing about this book? The plot and story are very well-done, I think: to say it kept my attention is an understatement. Not only is it tightly-weaved, but it's deep. When something happens, it will effect at least three of the plot elements or subplots, and what will happen can't be predicted. There were a lot of plot twists: the last one was the most dramatic. It was if part of a song was there, but very subtle, and then toward the end it builds up and then that part of the song just guides the ending. I was also entranced by the format of the southern gothic, which is not a genre I am familiar with, except in that it left a bad taste in my mouth when I first encountered it in English 102. I didn't know what was meant by it, but I had vague impressions that it was romantic in the cultural sense -- not in the Cupid's Arrow sense. That is true of this novel, especially with the character of Livy Marson. Despite my aversion to romanticism, I was able to enjoy this book -- to be enthralled about it. Gage and the other characters gripped me right from the start , and they never let go.

I am pleased that my local library has other books by Greg Iles. I will be reading more of this guy, although I suspect that this book has set the bar so high that I will be disappointed by any other books I read.