Rating: 
Summary: Fast-paced Reading
Review: Nothing gets in the way of the story in The Quiet Game, a suspenseful page-turner that keeps the pace through over 400 pages. Penn Cage, a prosecutor from Houston and an author of legal thrillers, returns to his boyhood home in Natchez, Mississippi to help his daughter Annie recover from his wife's death. In an interview with an ambitious local journalist, he mentions the Del Payton case, a racial murder that has remained unsolved for thirty years. Suddenly Cage finds himself in the midst of a storm of racial tensions, crime and political intrigue in which all the major suspects are playing The Quiet Game, a game of waiting to see who breaks first. Greg Iles has done a wonderful job writing a book that is hard to put down. Not only is it well-plotted, but the characters are likable and the setting is well-established. The swamps of Natchez yield not only old grudges, but new insights about race relations as Cage works to bring the murderer to justice. Definitely a 5-star read.
Rating:
Summary: I wish there were more stars!
Review: Even though he's a popular author with a huge following and plenty of security, former Houston prosecutor Penn Cage is a haunted man. He's just lost his wife after a lengthy battle with cancer; he's being stalked by the brother of a man he successfully prosecuted and sent to death; and his young daughter sees her dead mother everywhere. After a particularly heart-wrenching experience at Disney World, he scoops his daughter into his arms and heads for the only place where he can find peace: HOME. Home is Natchez, Mississippi. Home is where his father, sixty-six year old Dr. Tom Cage, is still practicing down home medicine, complete with house calls and no HMO's. "My parents started life with nothing, and in a single generation, though hard work and sacrifice, lived what was once unapologetically called the American Dream." Home is where his mother longs to help her son and her granddaughter heal. Peggy Cage is "...a girl who made the social journey from the 4-H Club to the Garden Club without forgetting her roots. She could take tea with royalty and commit no faux pas, yet just as easily twist the head off a banty hen, boil the bristles off a hog, or kill an angry copperhead." Home is where the Cage's beloved family maid, Ruby Flowers, waits: "Ruby Flowers came to work for us in 1963 and, except for one life-threatening illness, never missed a single workday until arthritis forced her to slow down thirty years later." Home is where Cage and Annie can find peace and recover from their loss. Or is it? "Natchez is unlike any place in America, existing almost outside time.....In some ways it isn't part of Mississippi at all....Natchez exists in a ripple of time that somehow eludes the homogenizing influence of the present." Upon his arrival at the Cage home, Penn immediately suspects that something is seriously wrong. His father has been cashing in large CD's and cannot account for the money's whereabouts. When Penn finally figures out the reason, his determination to clear his father's name leads him into a hornet's nest of deceit, greed, and a 30-year old murder case. Before the 559-page book ends, no one escapes unscathed. Penn's parents must relive a particularly difficult time in their lives. Penn's values and judgment are challenged to the extreme. He also has to deal with Olivia Marston, his long lost love and the unanswered questions surrounding his feelings for her. And, at the core of this story lies the underbelly of Natchez' racial history which is exposed in the most unflattering way possible. The local police and the FBI enter the fray, making for a hair-raising, spine-tingling, thought-provoking read that doesn't let up from the first page until the last. This was my first Greg Iles book, but I can promise you, it won't be my last. Iles has a gift for suspense, introspection and characterization like no other writer around today. He's been compared to John Grisham, but I think he's in a league of his own. He's a young man and THE QUIET GAME is only his 4th novel. With any luck, we'll be hearing about Greg Iles for years to come. Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: Not as good as 24 Hours
Review: Some seven months after his wife's death, best-selling author and former prosecuting attorney Penn Cage returns with his four-year-old daughter to his home town of Natchez, Mississippi. He manages almost at once to stir up long-moldering racial tensions in the small town with a chance remark he makes to an ambitious and unusually persuasive journalist, the braless insubstantially shirted Caitlin Masters. Penn soon finds himself investigating the thirty-year-old murder he had mouthed off about, but many people--among them the director of the FBI and Natchez's most fearsome resident, the corrupt Judge Leo Marston--would prefer that the 1968 car bombing of black factory worker Del Payton remain unsolved.
The plot of Greg Iles's The Quiet Game is complex, and its principal characters are three dimensional, but the book did not pack the emotional wallop I expected of it after reading Iles's 24 Hours. It may be that the story is slowed down by unnecessary detail. For example, describing Penn's arrival at the site of the murder, the parking lot of a battery plant, Iles launches into a history of the factory: "The dark skeleton of the Triton Battery plant materializes to our right as Ike turns onto Gate Street, then right again into a parking lot lighted by the pink glow of mercury vapor. The Triton Battery Company came to Natchez in 1936 to build batteries for Pullman rail cars. In 1940 they retooled the line to manufacture batteries for diesel submarines. After the war it was truck batteries, marine batteries, whatever fit the changing market. The last I heard, Triton was using its ancient equipment to produce motorcycle batteries for European manufacturers." But while slower than it might be and longer than it perhaps should be, The Quiet Game remains a decent read. Fans of courtroom dramas in particular will enjoy the book's denouement.
Rating:
Summary: Another excellent Iles story.
Review: After reading this book, the fourth I've read by this author, I now rank him as one of my favorite. When I first read the synopsis, this book didn't excite me. I guess I was a little tired of the civil rights murder solved 30 years later plotline. Now I wish I hadn't waited so long. Iles writes another brilliant story full of twists and turns and interesting characters. Penn Cage returns home after his wife has died and gets caught up in the murder of a black man from 30 years ago. Cage believes the killer was his ex-girlfriend's father, Leo Martson. Of course there are numerous twists and turns involving the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, and crooked cops. In a story with so many twists and turns, Iles sometimes leaves out character development. Caitlin Masters is a newspaper publisher who helps Cage. She starts out with a bang but really is ignored at the end. Most of the truth about the murder is revealed before the courtroom finale, leaving little to be resolved at the end. This book is a lot like Mortal Fear and nothing like 24 hours. I am about to read Dead Sleep which I am sure will be another excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic read--a super spellbinder!!!
Review: I totally agree with the "better than Grisham" comment; this was the first Iles book I picked up and I could hardly put it down. Compelling and likable characters, a satisfying and surprising plot, constant and realistic action. I judge a book or movie by how much I continue to think about it afterward. If it really intrigues me, it will stay on my mind for days, and this book did. I highly recommend The Quiet Game, even for those who don't think they like suspense thrillers. It is outstanding and up there with the class I consider to be the best books I've ever read.
Rating:
Summary: A new favourite
Review: This is my first book by Greg Iles, and I've already noticed he's one helluva good writer, but what is most impressive is that his subjects change greatly along each book he writes. "The quiet game" is a legal thriller, in the likes of John Grisham - when Grisham still knew how to write -, but in "Spandau phoenix" and "Black cross" we have Second World War, "24 hours" is a pure thriller about kidnapping, in "Dead sleep" we have an investigative thriller, etc. What I'm trying to say is that Iles is not afraid to write, no matter what about, as long as the plot is good. And, at least in "The quiet game", the plot is very good. Penn Cage abandoned a successfull career as a death-row prosecutor to become a legal-thriller writer. Then, when his young wife dies because of cancer, he goes back to his childhood city, Natchez, Mississipi, to get help from his parents to raise his daughter. But, inadvertently, Cage steps in a wasp's nest when he mentions, in a conversation with a journalist friend, an unresolved racial crime that happened 30 years ago. Suddenly, the little town must take sides on the matter, and Penn finds himself standing in the thin line that is the middle of a war zone in Natchez. This is just the main plot of "The quiet game". Iles throws lots of other balls in the air and seems to be toying with them, it's no effort for him not to let them fall. The text is good, there are lots of action scenes, the situations begin to be tied-up together and in the end, I was left with the impression of an excellent book. Penn Cage is not the only fully-developed character in the book. There are many of them, and the simple mentioning of their names brings to the reader instant recognition: they are all three-dimensional, some good, some wickedly bad, but all very present throughout the story. Greg Iles was really raised in Natchez, and I wonder how much of the book was imagination and how much of it was the truth. Even the name of the main character has the same number of letters of the author. Anyway, I'm staying clear of the town for the time being.
"The quiet game" is also Iles' personal favourite of his own books. Which means something, don't you think? Grade 9.1/10
Rating:
Summary: another great Greg Iles book
Review: The Quiet Game rivals the intensity and suspense of Spandau Phoenix and Mortal Fear. A leading attorney turned successful author returns to his hometown of Natchez, Mississippi, and gets drawn into investigating what appears to be an unsolved civil rights murder that occurred during his childhood. When he begins to discover that the truth of that murder has major ramifications for the present state of affairs in his hometown as well as his personal past and his psyche, the plot of The Quiet Game reaches the high level of Iles' best books. He does a nice job of blending historical threads with familiar experience to create suspenseful fiction. Character development and plot are balanced nicely, and the suspense and the conclusion are wholly satisfactory.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT BOOK!
Review: Loved it, couldn't put it down, he's a talented writer that keeps the pace moving enough to maintain reader interest, and enough so that you are sorry to see the book end. Looking forward to more from him!
Rating:
Summary: Storyline that keeps you guessing.....
Review: The twists and turns that book takes is wonderful and keeps you guessing. Being from Natchez, it was neat to be able to picture the places that were talked about in the book. Though the book is fiction, the places talked about in the book are real. Iles did a good job with description and accurately portrayed that part of the south. This book puts you right in the middle of Natchez in a tough racial battle, and you are liable to get lost in the book, due to the realism and the fast, exciting storyline.
Rating:
Summary: THE GAME'S AFOOT
Review: Greg Iles has turned into one of my favorite authors; his style is very original. Iles also has the rare ability to write scenes that are extremely "human" and believable. In this outing, Iles introduces us to Penn Cage (a character he later resurrects in "Sleep No More'), an idealistic lawyer who is trying to cope with the death of his young wife, and raising his eight year old daughter in her absence. His return to his Mississippi home involves him in a twenty year old murder that hints at the involvement of a local political bigwig, who just happens to be the father of the girl Penn loved while in college.
Iles doesn't totally make the mark in this book, however. It seems a little too long, and sometimes the pacing slows the suspense down. Also, I found Penn's undying love for Livy rather absurd, considering what she did to him, and how she acts in the big trial scene. He also doesn't take long to get the hots for Caitlin, the reporter. His wife only gone for seven months, seems like his hormonal juices are flowing a little too quickly.
With that flaw aside, the rest of the book is devastating in some of its scenes. The death or Ruby is crushing, and handled beautifully by Iles.
RECOMMENDED.
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