Southern Man: Greg Iles

Greg Iles fans, do some push ups. Limber up your wrists. Iles has released “Southern Man,” the seventh Penn Cage thriller, that comes in at a massive brick of 966 pages and it’s a page turner.

“Southern Man” takes place 15 years after the “Natchez Burning” trilogy. Penn Cage, novelist, attorney, former mayor, advocate, is alone. His crusading physician father died in prison. His mother is on her death bed. His daughter is grown and on her own. He’s never really found love since the brutal murder of his fiancee. He no longer writes. He’s no longer mayor. But he does work as the city attorney for his Mississippi hometown.

Everything goes bad fast when deputies recklessly kill several teens while taking down a gunman during a concert. As the town reels from this trauma, a group begins burning down the Mississippi town’s historic antebellum homes. Both incidents are fueled by long-running and quickly deteriorating race relations.

Simultaneously, a war hero/conservative talk show host has returned to his hometown to play in a pro-am golf tournament and kick off his presidential bid.

Older and facing health problems of his own, Penn Cage is in the thick of all of it.

And it is thick. Not just the nearly thousand page count but the number of characters, subplots and non-stop action. Author Ken Follett writes sweeping historic novels of similar lengths that teeter back and forth between the good guys and bad guys getting the upper hand across years and decades. Iles does the same in an epic that takes place during less than a handful of days.

In addition to the whirlwind of events happening in this novelization of our 2023, Penn delves into his mother’s genealogy project that takes readers back to the Civil War era. Iles writes extensively about this family history.

“Southern Man” is a great read but it is a lot. A day’s events can stretch past 300 pages. The book strains credibility in places and tests one’s patience when you may want to keep reading to find out what’s happening now instead of what happened 150 years ago.

Despite its weight and length, you won’t want to put it down.

Detective Comics:

Gotham Nocturne

Issue by issue, stretching across four parts, “Detective Comics” latest story arc is epic in scope, intimate in delving into Batman’s psyche and tremendous in its impact.

It’s not unusual for a new creative team to come on board an ongoing comic book with a grand vision for its planned run, even though the run usually comes across as being episodic rather than cinematic. But writer Ram V and artist Rafael Albuquerque stepped into Gotham City trumpeting a massive storyline.

“Gotham Nocturne” opened with an “Overture” in issue No. 1062, published July 2022. Two years later, the storyline continues. An amazing run, featuring stalwarts such as Two Face, Catwoman, Mr. Freeze, etc.; with Batman/Bruce Wayne confronting his past, his present and his mortality; a new group claiming Gotham as its long-earned inheritance, etc.

It may sound like familiar ground – after 80 years of stories, there are plenty of familiar elements – but Ram V, Albuquerque and other artists tap into a rich new vein of material to make Batman new again.

Readers can seek the past individual issues and keep up with the story monthly – “Gotham Nocturne” is currently in its third part. Or find the trade paperbacks being released to collect several issues at a time.