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Turning Angel: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Greg Iles
Publisher: Scribner
Category: eBooks
(as of 9/4/10 07:44 PDT - Details)
This item is no longer available
Rating:  154 reviews
Sales Rank: 3647
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 672
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
ASIN: B000FCKO4U
Publication Date: December 27, 2005
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Product Description
Turning Angel marks the long-awaited return of Penn Cage, the lawyer hero of The Quiet Game, and introduces Drew Elliott, the highly respected doctor who saved Penn's life in a hiking accident when they were boys. As two of the most prominent citizens of Natchez, Drew and Penn sit on the school board of their alma mater, St. Stephen's Prep. When the nude body of a young female student is found near the Mississippi River, the entire community is shocked -- but no one more than Penn, who discovers that his best friend was entangled in a passionate relationship with the girl and may be accused of her murder. On the surface, Kate Townsend seems the most unlikely murder victim imaginable. A star student and athlete, she'd been accepted to Harvard and carried the hope and pride of the town on her shoulders. But like her school and her town, Kate also had a secret life -- one about which her adult lover knew little. When Drew begs Penn to defend him, Penn allows his sense of obligation to override his instinct and agrees. Yet before he can begin, both men are drawn into a dangerous web of blackmail and violence. Drew reacts like anything but an innocent man, and Penn finds himself doubting his friend's motives and searching for a path out of harm's way. More dangerous yet is Shad Johnson, the black district attorney whose dream is to send a rich white man to death row in Mississippi. At Shad's order, Drew is jailed, the police cease hunting Kate's killer, and Penn realizes that only by finding Kate's murderer himself can he save his friend's life. With his daughter's babysitter as his guide, Penn penetrates the secret world of St. Stephen's, a place that parents never see, where reality veers so radically from appearance that Penn risks losing his own moral compass. St. Stephen's is a dark mirror of the adult world, one populated by steroid-crazed jocks, girls desperate for attention, jaded teens flirting with nihilism, and hidden among them all -- one true psychopath. It is Penn's journey into the heart of his alma mater that gives Turning Angel its hypnotic power, for on that journey he finds that the intersection of the adult and nearly adult worlds is a dangerous place indeed. By the time Penn arrives at the shattering truth behind Kate Townsend's death, his quiet Southern town will never be the same.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 154
 PURE ILES - POWERFUL AND UNPUTDOWNABLE December 20, 2005
Gail Cooke (TX, USA)
66 out of 87 found this review helpful
With seamless, suspense filled plotting and dialogue so crisp that it crackles, Greg Iles (Blood Memory, The Footprints of God) delivers another surprise packed story. Turning Angel is a thought provoking thriller as it reveals the dark side of high school life today, educating many as it spotlights the choices and crises faced by our youth. It's pure Iles, powerful and unputdownable.
Penn Cage, writer and attorney, has returned to his hometown of Natchez, Mississippi to raise his young daughter, Annie. He's widowed and has had an off again - on again relationship with a younger woman on a high career curve. More than age, distance tends to separate them. Penn has also returned to his childhood friend, Dr. Andrew Elliott, Rhodes scholar, internist, a "golden boy, a paragon of everything small town America holds to be noble, and by unwritten law the town will crucify him with a hatred equal to their betrayed love."
Both men serve on the board of a private school, a bastion of learning that produces such outstanding students as 17-year-old Kate Townsend, class Valedictorian, tennis ace, beautiful, soon to attend Harvard. She is the best of the best - and she is found raped and murdered, her body discovered in St. Catherine's Creek.
That's enough of a shock for one evening, but Penn receives a double whammy when Drew confesses that he loved Kate and had been having an affair with her. He had planned to leave his wife, had even placed a down payment on a house in Cambridge where he and Kate would live.
As a friend, it takes Penn some time to mentally accept Drew's confession; as an attorney he knows that in Mississippi, due to Kate's age, Drew can be arrested for statutory rape. Even worse, as the full impact of what he has heard sinks in, Penn realizes that his friend may well be accused of murder.
District Attorney Shad Johnson, a black man, can hardly wait. Born in Natchez, he grew up in Chicago and returned to Natchez to run for mayor. He lost that election but he's determined not to lose another - sending a rich white man to death row and the attendant headlines would serve his political ambitions well.
Penn has little time to mull over his friend's options before he receives a call from Drew saying that someone has called demanding $20,000 or he'll tell the world about Drew's affair with Kate. The anonymous caller tells Drew to put a bag with the money on the fifty yard line of the school's stadium. Penn tells Drew not to go near the stadium, but he knows better - grabbing a gun he drives to the school in search of his friend.
What ensues is a nightmare scene like no other as the pair find themselves being shot at by not one but two people. When the money bag is picked up, Drew and Penn begin a futile chase that nearly is the death of both of them. And all of this before page 55!
It soon becomes obvious that Penn is up against some formidable foes - not only is Shad Johnson eager to pin the murder on Drew, but he's joined by Sheriff Billy Byrd and Judge
Arthel Minor. Many of the townspeople are developing the mentality of a lynch mob, and Drew's wife is filing for an ugly divorce. What becomes patently obvious is that if Penn has any chance of saving his friend, he'll have to find Kate's murderer himself.
Author Iles has a gift for developing strong ancillary characters - they're etched with precision and color. There is Mia, Kate's classmate and Penn's baby sitter, who guides Penn through the murky corridors of drug wheeling and dealing at the respected school; Marko, an exchange student who grew up in a war zone; and Ellen, Drew's vengeful, addicted wife.
While Turning Angel is without a doubt a first-rate thriller, it is also a mind numbing story of the loss of innocence. An innocence never to be found again.
Highly recommended.
- Gail Cooke
Iles hits another one out of the park! January 5, 2006
ellen (Atlanta, Georgia USA)
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
I am a great fan of Greg Iles - my favorites are Mortal Fear and The Quiet Game - in the latter we meet Penn Cage, who comes home to Natchez and figures decades old mysteries. Quiet Game had lyrical passages that haunt the reader well after it is finished. Penn Cage is also featured in Turning Angel.
While Turning Angel is not as lyrical, it still has an impact and is vintage Iles. The bit of lyrical magic happens when Penn talks about the Turning Angel - a figure in the cemetery that looks like it turns and looks at you from many angles. In other words, what is the reality, and what is the illusion.
While the book is defending Penn's childhood friend from a gruesome murder, it hits you in the face with the reality of what is going on in high schools, drugs, sex, etc. as opposed to the illusion of the innocent youth perhaps we had ages ago.
Some have said they knew who is the real killer very early on, I read about 50 authors, mostly thrillers and mysteries, and there were so many suspects, I didn't want Turning Angel to end, much less, acknowledge the killer.
You get a further idea of Penn Cage as a man, a lawyer, father, friend, lover. His integrity to do what is best for the greater good makes us want to know him better. Also in Angel, we see many characters, good and bad, from Quiet Game -
One hopes to yet deepen our knowledge of Penn in a future prize from Iles - although I keep looking for another WOW like Mortal Fear -
A work of art... April 9, 2007
E. Bonnell (E. Hartford, CT USA)
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
Greg Iles does a masterful job in producing a memorable and provocative page turner. The plot is intricately layered with threads of racial conflict, drugs, under age sex, and murder while a long cast of characters adds to an emotionally deep story. The setting is in the racially charged south were an accomplished doctor is accused of murdering his mistress, who happens to be a 17 year old high school student. Dr. Andrew Elliott now needs his friend and former prosecutor Penn Cage to help him unravel the mystery and clear his name. Penn is introduced to a world where youth has literally gone wild, and finds out for himself how complicated the life of a high school teenager really is.
Turning Angel is an intelligently absorbing book. It does what all top shelf fiction novels do or should do in my opinion. Good fiction first and foremost should be entertaining but with substance, provided by interesting and well developed characters. Equally important, a good work of fiction should raise questions and force you think about the world around you. The art of fiction is to make that happen through a story, without being lectured and thus providing entertainment with substance. That's why this novel succeeds as a work of art. It conjures up such disturbing and powerful images of modern day teens; you may be pulling your kids out of school by the end. To say this book is thought provoking would be an understatement. Start this book and you may as well get comfortable as you're soon engrossed by a mess of emotions and turbulent times rooted in today's youth. You will not be able put it down.
Eerie February 23, 2006
Montague
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I have long been a fan of Greg Iles' work and this novel does not disappoint. A slightly darker tone but still keeps you guessing in a good way.
Outstanding, Vivid, Page-turner August 5, 2007
John D. Parken (Springdale, UT)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Iles blends his well-researched sense of place with a complex but highly believable plot. His characters are strong and ring true. His topic may make some uncomfortable but then, if we are not sometimes uncomfortable with what's happening in every-day life these days, we are not understanding what's happening in today's world. This may be fiction, but it provokes thought and perhaps has some worthwhile observations as well.
Usually, I don't care for first person, present tense narration, but I truly loved this book and really didn't want the story to end.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 154
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