Turning Angel: A Novel Reviews

• PURE ILES - POWERFUL AND UNPUTDOWNABLE

  
  By A3M174IC0VXOS2 on 2005-12-20
  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
  
  
  

• What a stinker

  
  By A1BZN88T4GSZG0 on 2006-05-28
  Turning Angel was a truly awful book. I have read Iles before, and I know he can do so much better than that. I have to think he was under pressure to produce and he threw together a batch of leftovers for his publisher.
  
  If you'd taken away the hero's cell phone he wouldn't have had a clue. For some reason whenever the tiniest bit of news popped up, everyone from the sheriff, to the police chief, to the kids in the local high school, to the victim's family, to the local drug lords, all called Penn Gage immediately on his cell phone or showed up at his door with boxes of crucial evidence, until he was practically covered in secret journals and photos and mysterious phone numbers and videotapes and...... It got so repetitive and silly.
  
  Unlike real life, people just couldn't wait to tell Gage every little self-incriminating secret - including the killer, of course. And when Iles relates what really happened to the poor victim during what must have been a period of about fifteen minutes, I almost had to laugh. Sorry. The only people who didn't show up at the scene were the clowns from Ringling Brothers Circus.
  
  This might be a good time for Amazon to come up with a rating of negative stars for us to choose from.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Turning Angels is my first Greg Iles read and it will be my last

  
  By A1I8R8DPD8W58F on 2006-03-26
  I had heard such great things about Greg Iles and had not read anything by him because murder mysteries are not my genre. Remember, I just owned up to the fact that murder mysteries are not my thing. So, a book has to be good; no, really good; to impress me. However, a friend was so excited about his books and told me that this was just a page turner so I was eager to give it a go.
  
  The book is a pot boiler. Truly all that is missing is the kitchen sink. The plot has no depth, teaches us nothing and hopes to convince us that the mere complexity of who could have done it makes it a brilliant book.
  
  The murder scene becomes laughable with so many who-done-its right there like they were all invited for a wienie roast.
  
  
  I finished the book and was interested enough to do that. However, I walked away from it wondering why I felt like I had to shake my head and find something to read that would take the bad taste away. This is not a good book.
  
  

• I'm told that Greg Iles, the author, lives in Natchez, MS.

  
  By A1TWTULVD6F22O on 2006-04-16
  
  
  And if that is true, one wonders how the people of Natchez forgave him for his latest effort, "Turning Angel". Lead character in the novel, attorney/author Penn Cage, appeared before in one of Iles' best, "The Quiet Game". That's what convinced me to return to another Iles read, after throwing in the towel with his last book, "Blood Memory".
  
  I stopped being an avid fan of Iles work with his quasi-science-fiction tome, "The Footprints of God". Iles writes long novels, usually no less than 500 pages, and it was a deadly chore to even finish "The Footprints of God". In "Blood Memory", Iles returned to Natchez with a new character, Cat Ferry, a foresic odontologist. "Blood Memory" dragged on despite and in spite of Cat, who maybe the most screwed up heroine ever conceived in thriller fiction. Despite her failings, Cat was an interesting heroine, and, once again, Natchez, with all of its history and southern charm and prejudice, made for a good backdrop although the storyline left something to be desired.
  
  
  In reading "Turning Angel", I will admit that I lasted through the end of the story and slogged through the nearly 500 pages, still convinced that the core murder plot, and likely murderer, would keep me turning the pages. What DID keep me turning the pages was the sound of my own jaw dropping as Iles piled up new and shocking detail after detail. That is why I wonder what the good folks of Natchez think about their local hero, who has gifted his home city (which is a town of about 25,000 people) with some of the most amoral and lewd behavior and crime imaginable.
  
  It is not enough that the high school valedictorian, stunning Kate Townsend, is brutally murdered and her seemingly innocent life revealed to be a series of sexual and drug-related endeavors that have all been hidden from the town until her death. No, Iles had to add Asian drug lords, a sadistic black
  dope peddler who administers heroin torture, people desperate to get hold of copious amounts of painkillers, a victim of Serbian terrorism who then turns to crime, a civil rights lawyer that has turned to insurance fraud and scores of slayings of teens,cops, gangs, middle class couples...you name it, in small town Mississippi. And through all this runs a story that has the district attorney and sheriff of the county stacked up against the city police department as to WHO gets to solve the crimes. It's just too much, too over the top.
  
  I'm not sure about Iles fantasies, either, because he has 40- something professional men agonizing over the love of 17 and 18 year old girls, who are into cheerleading and making good grades on the side. These girls have been accepted at Harvard and Brown. I'm sure the girls are hot to look at, but unless Iles has a completely different and sophisticated society in Natchez, the last time I checked high school co-eds were too self-centered and too damn young to command anything but some unacted-upon lust from civic leaders. The affair between Dr. Drew and Kate Townsend, which is approved of by her mom (she's 17!)is just too ridiculous to even imagine.
  
  There are apparently a lot of Iles fans out there that forgive his piling on of subplot after subplot, each more shocking than the last, in the interests of a compelling story. I say, sure, Iles is readable, but when you're finished you feel a little dirty and sad that you wasted your time.
  
  He's off my reading list.
  
  

• Good but problematic

  
  By A268EEWUXYCA8Q on 2006-01-10
  I will never forget how I stumbled about Greg Iles as an author. On vacation, I went through all of the books I brought for enjoyment on the plane ride. In the airport bookstore, I came across Dead Sleep. I just picked it up since it seemed interesting. Since then, I have read every single Greg Iles book released at least once.
  
  What I enjoy about Greg Iles is that, while the books fall under the long umbrella of the thriller genre, they all are different. Whether its pulling in relgion and computers, World War 2, supernatural possession, legal thrillers et al, each book is a totally different beast that has Iles's attention to plot and detail. Turning Angel is no different. It is a terrific story about the funny thing called love. It also deals with some troubling issues in today's society and the way high school is.
  
  It begins as a taut legal thriller where Penn Cage (From Quiet Game and Sleep No More) has to defend his friend who had saved his life previously. His friend was in love with a high schooler and that high schooler turned up dead. All clues begin pointing to Penn's friend as the killer. Meanwhile, the story touches on drug warfare, adolescent sex and more double-crossing and political reaching than you can imagine.
  
  The thing I admire most about Iles as an author is his ability to make flawed characters who never come across as being a "victim." His characters usually feel real and are complicated; by the end of the novel you usually see them in a different light than when the book started. This and a meticulous plot are what usually drives his novels.
  
  I received an advanced copy of this book to read and I found myself unable to put it down. Turning Angel is a good book. In fact, about 2/3s of the book is incredibly engrossing and excellent. Unfortunately, for me, the book begins to fall apart towards the end. Iles loves throwing twists in the plot and I usually love each and every one of them. But at times (as happened in his last book Blood Memory) the plot seems to almost get away from him. I didn't care for the last portion of Turning Angel. It seemed like too many different threads were trying to be resolved too shortly. And compounding this was more plot twists that ended up not being plot twists (and I can't talk about them without ruining them). It kept twisting too much that it almost fell apart. Also, Greg Iles usually keeps me guessing as to who's the eventual mastermind behind the story or how the story will end. I unfortunately had this story mostly pegged from the beginning.
  
  At times exemplifying Iles's best in terms of characterizations and plot, Turning Angel also presents some of his flaws. Its a great novel. I loved it. But the ending didn't do it for me. Still an excellent read and a great follow up to The Quiet Game. I'm curious to see where Penn Cage's story will go next.
  
  
• Save Your Money
  By A11KW9LS6DLVZQ on 2006-04-18
  I used to be a fan of Greg Iles but his writing has gone steadily downhill and his most recent novel is really the nadir. The plot is completely contrived and full of implausible developments whose only purpose is to keep the narrative careening along at breakneck speed so that you don't stop to ask whether it makes any sense (which it doesn't). The characters are equally unbelievable, from the overachieving male protagonists whose lack of common sense makes you wonder how they tie their shoes in the morning to the vapid, Ivy League-bound coeds whose sole fictional purpose seems to be to satisfy the wet dreams of Mr. Iles and his middle-aged readers. Underlying it all is a leering voyeurism that makes the self-congratulatory moralizing of the narrator seem completely fraudulent. If you want cheap thrills tarted up as "unflinching realism," save your money and watch the OC.
  
  
• Midlife Gothic
  By AJQKB9J35VRIX on 2006-04-26
  I have always enjoyed Greg Iles, who has been able to position himself as a Mississippi writer, with a mission to explode myths about the Deep South, while skillfully using the thriller formula. However, it would seem that good intentions have turned sour. In his last book, he resurrected discredited theories on repressed memory and childhood abuse issues in order to grind one ax. Now he has come full circle, to act out the fantasies of midlife crisis and bitter disillusionment.
  
  It seems that Blue State sensibilites are now in full force corrupting the gentile citizens of sleepy ol' Natchez. The oppressed black folk are now throughly corrupt politicans, drug lords and crack addicts. Institutionalized segregation isn't the problem, it seems for the public schools spend lots of (for Mississippi)money trying to educate the poor, who are ungrateful and continue to lazy and stupid. And third rate private schools, turn out brilliant cheerleaders and nubile writers, who just can't get enough of old farts with big bank accounts.
  
  Our hero, Penn Cage, likes to think of himself as a latter day Atticus Finch set down in a 21st Century Sodom, where his best friend is in a world of trouble when his underage mistress, soon to be trophy wife(while going to Harvard!) turns up a ravaged corpse...
  
  And of course, ol' Penn has to fight off his own beautiful, insatiable babysitter...who is tracked to go to Brown. And to make matter worse, Penn's liberal, reporter girlfriend has been out of town taking care of her career, while Penn ponders running for mayor.
  
  Then there is the matter of the exchange student from Bosnia (or is it Croatia....no matter, he does get around for someone who has been in town for all of ten minutes).
  
  Business is lousy. The plant has closed, and there is no Walmart in sight to pick up the slack. Cut to: a few drive by massacres...
  
  And you got one heck of a big book with enough sex 'n violence to engage a twelve year old video game addict, while adding enough salacious detail to titillate and shock the family values crowd.
  
  One would have hoped that Mr. Ides would have dealt with disillusionment with a nice red porsche, rather than writing a novel which scolds those beautiful young girls for being so seductive and good in bed!
  
  And so old tired sterotypes are at war with new tired stereotypes....and Southern civilization crumbles in an orgy of good intentions gone bad.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Lurid and Overblown -- The Weakest Iles Book I have Read
  By A16QQ78I8J29PA on 2007-01-15
  In terms of pure writing talent, I think it's hard to beat Greg Iles. He has the remarkable ability to hook a reader into a gripping story from page one. Iles knows how to write a compelling page-turner better than almost anybody. I am a big fan of Iles' work, and encourage readers to read some of Iles' earlier work, especially THE QUIET GAME and DEAD SLEEP.
  
  I think the flaw of Iles' work is his strong tendency to design plots that are sensationalistic and over-the-top. This flaw became particularly particularly apparent when I read TURNING ANGEL. The storyline of this novel is not even remotely believable, and is overstuffed with a lot of coincidences and contrivances. Much of the dialogue is stilted and preachy. As a result, many scenes come across as more melodramatic than effective. Imagine a hypersexed version of "Peyton's Place" and you have this book.
  
  In the end, TURNING ANGEL fails because there are very few likable characters. All the people in this book are self-absorbed, self-indulgent and amoral, with the exception of the main character, Penn Cage. The "victim" in this book, whom Cage is fighting for, is a completely unsympathetic 40-year old man who has a romantic relationship with a 17-year old girl. Not only that, but he's planning to walk away from his family (including his young son) to run away with this girl. So why should I care about this guy? In the end, I really didn't care about what happened to him.
  
  Iles' depiction of high school life also seems to be based on sensationalized tabloid stories of raves, rampant sex and casual drug use. None of the teenagers seem believable. All the high school girls talk like 40-year olds, and seem more than willing to hook up with middle-aged men, all of whom are portrayed as chick magnets (Penn Cage pretty much has to fight off women with a stick). Much of this sounds like wishful thinking on Iles' part, and bears little resemblance to reality.
  
  Iles' is usually good at writing women, but most of the women in this story pretty much serve as sex toys for the male characters. There's a lecture at the end of this book about modern morality, but it pretty much falls flat due to the 500 pages of graphic, over-the-top sexuality that preceded it. In the end, Iles seems to be bemoaning the moral character and lost innocence of the young, but his moralizing eventually becomes drawn out and tiresome.
  
  In short, this book was just too lurid and silly for my tastes. My advice is to skip this novel, and read Iles' earlier work, which is far superior to this misfire.
  
  
• Greg Iles at his best
  By A2013JDMPUV6D9 on 2005-12-25
  I have to say right up front that this book is Greg Iles at his best. This story is a return to the genre that Iles himself helped to create - the taut, psychological thriller with a dash of legal drama and Southern slice of life thrown in for good measure! Here Iles has created a story throughout which you are honestly not sure if the main character / hero figure will succeed in his task or not. I especially applaud Iles' use of first person perspective to tell this story. By using this technique he gives Penn Cage life and makes us feel more empathy for him than we could ever feel for a character written in the third person perspective.
  
  One shining example of the depth of Iles' writing in Turning Angel is the scene where Penn's 18 year old babysitter Mia tries to seduce him. In reading that one small bit of storytelling, I didn't just get a sense of what the characters were going through, it was like Iles made me FEEL what his characters were feeling. As a professional librarian and lifelong fan of "thriller" fiction, I can say that Stephen King is the only other author who has exhibited the same skills that Iles shows us in this book.
  
  Even though this book is the second or third in the Penn Cage / Natchez "series", it can easily stand on its own. I wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone not familiar with Greg Iles work, and count it as required reading for all fans of John Grisham, Stephen King, Tom Clancy, James Patterson, Richard North Patterson, and Stuart Woods.
  
  
• Disappointing & more than a little creepy
  By A1G2QU18I9ZSNR on 2006-04-25
  I don't think it's a plot spoiler to say that this story deals with adult men connecting sexually with teenage girls.
  
  Greg Iles was way too tolerant of grown men taking advantage of teens who have grown up too quickly and want/need male attention due to not having a father involved in their lives.
  
  For a narrator who has a young daughter, it was pretty amazing to see how little troubled he was about men being attracted and/or having a sexual relationship with teen beauties.
  
  This book read more like the author's fantasies than something true to life. I haven't been a teenage girl for many years, but when I was that age my friends and I thought it was funny (in a pathetic way) that 30 or 40 something guys thought we might be interested in them.
  
  Pedestrian, overblown, unsurprising plot coupled with the weird fixation on teenage cheerleaders make this a very disappointing book. Mr. Iles is talented, but this book doesn't impress.
  
  
• Wonderful and Reflective in so many ways!
  By A2BZ7MYTSNYMEW on 2006-10-06
  First I must say that I had seen this book and even picked it up several times in the store, only to put it back down. I don't know, I think it was the cover that made me question it's appeal. However, I finally said, what the heck...I have nothing to loose, I can always put it down. Well, you can imagine my surprise when I found myself flipping page after page, and transporting myself to a small part of the world, Natchez MS. I had never heard of the author Greg Iles and this was my first introduction to his work. I really enjoyed it. The opening pages draw you into a story that promises more.
  
  The story was simple, and although there were startling revelations, it was not hard to follow. Penn Cage, attorney/novelist/widow returned to his hometown following a sensational trial and victory, to raise his daugher in a small town wholesome environment. Penn sits on the school board of his old school with his good friend/doctor/Golden Boy Drew Elliott. There is even mention of Drew saving Penn's life when they were young, and they have been friends ever since. From all appearances, Drew and Penn have it all. They are wonderfully successful, have great reputations, wonderful children and are the movers and shakers in the town. They have it all...one would think until one event spins both of their lives out of control,,,the rape/murder of a "pregnant" Kate Townsend. Kate is the beautiful, valedictorian who was scheduled to attend Harvard. From her death, we learn that Drew has done the unthinkable, he has been carrying on an affair with his 17 year old babysitter, Kate, who he intended to leave Natchez and be with until her untimely demise. He, he confides is trapped in a marriage with a woman who is addicted to painkillers, and the only thing keeping them together is his son. Through a series of twists and turns, the readers finds Drew and Penn facing armed blackmailers, and fighting for their lives (Penn's from a crazed drug dealer and Drew, who is tried for capital murder, where the sentence could be death).
  
  There are a host of complicated characters: Mia Burke (Penn's babysitter who he finds himself attracted to but not willing to cross the line. She is also the amateur sleuth who helps him eventually unravel the case. She is also Kate's rival,in love and school.); Sunny (a bitter, racist cop, whose own ambitions will eventually be his downfall); Shad Johnson (the Black District Attorney who has political ambitions to be Mayor); Cyrus (ex-military/drug dealer/obsessed with Kate); Marco (a drug dealer/war refuge who sees life through the terrifying eyes of a child who saw and experienced too much); Kaitlin (Penn's girlfriend who doesn't like small town living) and several others.
  
  There were some parts in the story that I would have liked to know more about, but overall, this novel had everything for a successful story. Natchez, although it appears small and quiet (25,000 residents and dropping) is a hot-bed of secrets and desires. You eventually learn that there are sexual exploits (among teens and adults), forbidden love triangles, drugs, racial tension, blackmail plots,and death. Everything is not what it seems.
  
  I really enjoyed this novel, and know that you will too.
  
  
• Be your own Mark Foley
  By A1LN13L2ER260D on 2006-10-17
  Thoughful male protagonists? If you are a forty-ish man who fantasizes about being seduced by his sexually experienced 17-year-old babysitter, who likes it rough, this novel will titillate you. Once you get over being thoughtful about that, you will be jerked through a fast-paced predictable plot until you leave the book in an airport for its next victim.
  
  
• Multi layered mysterey/thriller with great writing!
  By A208VGF7V0Y5NQ on 2005-12-28
  A friend left this book at my house the other day, I had never heard of Greg Iles before but it looked interesting. I started reading and was quickly hooked and I finished "Turning Angel" in two days! It is a great combo of legal thriller/psycho drama against a Southern scene. Unlike many of today's thrillers, at no point in this story is the reader ever sure of the outcome-this helps keep the tension and suspense at high level!
  
  At the center of the story is attorney Penn Cage. The murder of a beautiful teenager has the town of Natchez Mississippi in an uproar. Then Cage learns from his friend, Dr, Andrew Elliot, that the good doctor had been planning on leaving his wife to run off with the murdered 17 year old! Penn does not approve of the Doctor's conduct but does agree to represent him and help to unearth the girl's murderer. From here the book takes off and is a fine mystery/thriller but it is also a morality play, as people start to die and the secret lives of the towns High schoolers is uncovered.
  
  In spite of the great plotting, and its touching on so many relevant social issues, what really makes this book stand out among the rest is the writing. I really liked how the author uses the first person prospective of Penn to tell the story. The reader is actually transported into the head of Penn Cage! I can Highly recommend this book and look forward to more from this author in the future!
  
  
• Iles hits another one out of the park!
  By A3AFCZTWL5VNNR on 2006-01-05
  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 -
  
  
  
  
• Not up to his early work
  By A1JINMBBA2LL90 on 2006-02-28
  I had to make myself finish reading Turning Angel. Too many implausible plotlines. He is a great writer and his characters are very real - but not in Turning Angel. His previous books are page turners - not this one.
  
  
• Not Impressive
  By A24902ORGG82ND on 2006-05-20
  Greg Iles has written a 500 page novel which would make any person's stomach turn when thinking of the corruption of Natchez, Mississippi or I guess Anytown USA. This was at the core a murder mystery with a fairly engaging lawyer/writer Penn Cage. He is a good core character, but what ruined it for me and I can bet lots of fans was the disgusting portrayal of the affair of the town's 40 year old physician and resident hottie with the town's 17 year old high school queen. I'm not naive I know these things happen, but Isle's justification for this throughout the book is that the physician was "in love" even though it's considered a felony in this country with a 30 year punishable offense. The side running story between Penn and his 17 year old babysitter is nauseating. Maybe I am more sensitive than most because I have teenage daughters. Regardless of how Isles puts it, the high school hottie fantasy with the especially lurid description from the girl's diary and porno pictures was sick. I kept reading to the end to see if finally although the good doctor was acquitted for murder he would be sentenced for at least sexual battery ........nope. All the peripheral characters have met their judgement day; the drug dealer, the druggy wife, the gangster exchange student,and even the politically ambitious distric attorney, but the pedophile doctor and the pedophile highschool coach both go free with no mention of justice for their actions and Penn Cage considers this a moral victory as the killer is behind bars. I found this novel poorly written especially the dialogue, it was stilted and unnatural and the subject matter really distastful. It disturbed me that pedophilia was glorified and that the fantiasies of middle aged men doing it with high school girls was attributed to "the girls today aren't like the girls we knew." Not worth your time.
  
  
• Iles can do better
  By A3B5YLUMTZD0CD on 2006-06-03
  This novel requires that the readers suspend disbelief. I was appalled at the "romance" between a middle-aged physician and a 17-year old girl and, additionally, the coy interaction between the baby-sitter and main character. I can't believe I finished it, although the legal wrangling was often interesting. I think there was not enough effort made to make the characters believable - the main character's girlfriend was nothing short of sleazy, which is perhaps an apt description of much of this book. I hope that Iles has done and can do better. Somehow I can't see myself reading another one of his books until the memory of this one fades.
  
  
• The Definitive Midlife Man's Male Fantasy Novel
  By A21USWDNLCKB46 on 2007-01-12
  My all-female book club read this because one member's husband really liked it. While Iles fans will surely enjoy this read too, our book club probably has never laughed so hard than when we gathered to discuss this novel. The outcome was predictable, and the pages in the middle seemed to drag on and on with various silly details and unnecssary turns (much like driving around and around and around before asking for directions). One early scene seems to wrap it up well: the protagonist Penn leaves his home for only two hours one dark evening,during which time he rides around in a 4-wheeler over a football field where he is soon ambushed and engaged in a shooting match and a chase scene ensues. He gets scraped up, returning home to find his teenage babysitter (who addresses him by his first name and is a cheerleader to boot) not asking questions about what happened or why he left the house with a gun, but immediately and calmly leads him to the bathroom where he disrobes and she tends to his wounds.
  
  I can't say this novel was a total waste of our time, for the book club never laughed so hard about so much. The novel was a great conversation starter. Moreover, we learned about the Natchez cemetery where the real "turning angel" statue stands and how it "turns," and about in whose memory the statue was erected. Learning that history was the highlight.
  
  
• Dreck!
  By A1DH6QFU9Z7S4Z on 2006-12-31
  I can't get through it and will have to just read the ending. Utter nonsense! If it weren't for the babysitter, Mia, Penn wouldn't have a clue as to what's going on and when he's on his own he's pretty useless. There isn't any character developement and the preachiness is a definite turn off. I wonder if this was written solely to make some residents of Natchez uncomfortable.
  
  
• Where have I heard this story before?
  By A1GECGISIUZQHM on 2007-01-19
  Why does this story sound so familiar? Let's see ... beautiful blond high school senior, honors student, homecoming queen and small-town Golden Girl is brutally raped and murdered and her body dumped in a river. In the ensuing investigation, it emerges that she was involved in some pretty shady dealings and was apparently screwing half the town's male population, including those twice her age or older, most of whom fancied themselves in love with her. One of her school rivals develops a crush on the detective investigating the case, and puts herself in various dangerous situations to help him. Most of her peers seem worldly beyond their years, at least on the surface -- the truth is, nothing here is what it appears to be. Can anyone say ...... TWIN PEAKS?!?
  
  Of course, I have no idea where Greg Iles got the inspiration for this novel. But like most others here, I found the plotline implausible and predictable and the dialogue stilted (which is usually the case when a story is driven largely by the dialogue between characters). This is the first book I've read by Iles. My husband has read most of his books and says they are usually much better than this, so maybe I'll give him another chance. To his credit, at least Turning Angel provides a sober warning about what could happen to middle-aged men who mess around with underage girls.
  
  
• A work of art...
  By A2ZTQ2DPA2LYTM on 2007-04-10
  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.
  
  
  
• "What you see isn't always the reality."
  By AC1K4OQOZ90RS on 2005-12-25
  Greg Iles's new book, "Turning Angel," deals with the legal and emotional problems of Drew Elliott, a handsome doctor who is married and has a young son, Tim. Against his better judgment, Drew falls in love with a high school senior, Kate Townsend, and the two have an affair. When Kate's body is found washed up in St. Catherine's Creek, the residents of Natchez, Mississippi go into shock. Kate had been the town's golden girl, both a star tennis player and a brilliant student who was headed for Harvard. Now, the townspeople are looking to crucify whoever murdered this lovely young woman.
  
  Coming to Drew's aid is his childhood friend, Penn Cage, an attorney turned writer. Although Penn has his doubts about Drew's wisdom in getting physically involved with a teenager, he cannot believe in his heart that Drew is a murderer. Unfortunately, Shad Johnson, the black prosecutor in Natchez, wants to convict Elliott of killing Kate to boost his own political ambitions, and Johnson is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his aims. Penn enlists the help of a veteran black attorney named Quentin Avery to defend Drew, but the case looks hopeless from the outset. There is more than enough circumstantial evidence to send the doctor to death row.
  
  Greg Iles is a talented author who has a strong sense of time and place. Natchez, Mississippi and its close-knit community come to life in this novel, and Penn Cage is a lively and engaging protagonist. Penn is courageous, introspective, savvy, and willing to risk his life and reputation to help a friend in need. He is a lonely widower who has an off and on relationship with a journalist, and he is a devoted father to his little girl, Annie. So far, so good.
  
  "Turning Angel" gets into trouble when Iles introduces a host of subplots and minor characters to muddy the waters. This book features shootouts, drug dealers, explosions, hostage taking, blackmail, and a far-fetched conclusion. Penn even encourages his daughter's baby sitter, Mia, to risk her life by acting as his unofficial investigator. At five hundred pages, the book is bloated with endless dialogue and extraneous scenes that lessen the suspense rather than heighten it. In thrillers, streamlining the plot rather than padding it with multiple red herrings often makes for more believability. There was a good story here trying to emerge, but Iles buried it under layers of melodrama.
  
  
  
  
• Mostly Good, But Too Long & Preachy
  By A3GKJU8ZY27TIK on 2006-01-06
  Pros: Iles still has a real knack for telling a smalltown story where wickedness abounds! The bad guys (and gals) are truly wolves in sheep clothing, and hoping they get their just desserts really propels the storyline along. As always, writing style is important if an author wants to propel her/himself above the herd of average authors--Iles is in pretty good form here.
  
  I think Iles handles sex and erotic attraction well with his characters. The tension is palpable in these scenes and the surrounding dialogue.
  
  Cons: [...] His heroes (and protagonist) are not believable at all--"just graying a bit, but still tall, dark, thin (but quite muscular), athletic, played college football, Rhodes scholar, best selling author, lawyer (or doctor) seducing nubile teens with his manliness, etc." No one's all that. The title of the book is kind of dumb.
  
  The main characters are super hypocrites. Our protagonist is preaching to the other characters about how they must allow the hallowed law to guide their actions, and yet there are several instances where he or his buddy(ies) commit horrible felonies. But because they are so smart, sexy, and athletic--they can kill others "because they deserved it". Also, very, very few teens in high school are as sophisticated and experienced as these kids are--and it's even less possible in [...], MS.
  
  Iles preaches about racism quite a bit, and yet he offers no solutions to the problems he confesses to hate. His girlfriend provides a realistic and understandable view of white frustration, and all our hero can do is sling epithets. He himself grew up with a black maid who did all the real work in the house, and that's about as Southern racist as you can get. Iles needs to leave his politics and preaching out of his stories.
  
  Overall a fun read--but he's capable of better, [...]. Bring back Cat Ferry, please!
  
  
• turning away
  By AOE82QACLQ0EQ on 2006-04-06
  this meaty pile of words is indeed a page-turner. the recipe for thrillers is applied here. That being, sensational murder followed up by other sensational murders. naturally, the wrong man is accused and seemingly guilty. in it all, the good friend who is an expert at many things, like riding atvs, dodging bullets, fighting people,etc., stands by his guy. the friend is aided by a cute, precocious teen of the opposite sex. sexual tension is at play but they resist because they are above all that. all said, the bulk of this read is fairly tame but ridiculous. i've been to natchez and hundreds of other towns of it's size. i assure the dear readers, that the feds would've swooped down on this town after the 2nd murder. it's absurd to think a town would survive the mayhem that iles creates. finally, the forgiveness and seemingly happy ending for the husband and wife strikes me as a bit sexist. but, it's southern writing, with a hint of faux-progressive thought.
  worth a read if you've got a week to kill.
  
  
• Get this guy a competent editor
  By A22WKN6AWNFJID on 2006-04-23
  This book is about 100 pages too long. Terrible editing,plus way too much repetition and detail. Entire paragraphs could be removed. I am only half way thru and this is a long slog. A very disappointing read. His last 3 books have been bad! Save yourself both time and money - don't buy this book.
  
  
• Pushing the moral envelope
  By AL66W0H5A29VQ on 2006-06-20
  I have read all of Iles novels, and loved most, so was excited that Penn Cage was returning as he has been such a great protagonist. The first half of this book is quick, you can't put it down, but by the second half you are wondering ok, how much crazier could this be? I mean, Penn Cage is no superman, but the things he does are unbelieveable. Yes, folks, I know, it's fiction. To tell a good story however, I would think most of it should be plausible, or it's no fun. That's not the worst cricism I have of this book though. I feel Mr. Iles is really pushing the idea of pedophilia. Sorry, even if a girl is almost 18, she is still a child. At first Penn seems disgusted with his friend, but by the end of the book he is half in love with his own babysitter. He tries to justify this by explaining that girls are just way ahead of their time in this modern world. Maybe that is true, but that does not mean a 40 something year old man should take advantage of that. If Greg Iles has a wife, I would think she would be offended at this subject matter. Mr. Iles, of course, does not allow Mr. Cage to totally cross over the line, I mean it's just a kiss, right? And his babysitter happens to be 18, but still, it's a huge turn off for me, a female reader. Is Penn supposed to be looked up to because he did not take Mia up on her offer of sex? Please!! Iles was itching to go down that road, but he knew better. He allowed the secondary character, Drew, play that one out with all sorts of thoughtful fantasy, which is too explicit to write here. He obviously will use Penn again in the future, so he had to keep him somewhat clean. I won't look forward to another Penn Cage novel though. Instead of learning his lesson, he has a real man to man moment at the end of the book with Drew, admitting he understands why Drew did what he did. Ahh, youth, can a man recapture it with a girl young enough to be his daughter? According to this novel, I guess so.
  
  
• A Page Turner
  By A16QJ649N8PRV on 2006-09-20
  Turning Angel is a legal thriller worth reading. Set in Natchez, Mississippi, it has some of the same characters as one of the author's earlier books, 'The Quiet Game'.
  
  It is about a standout high school student, Kate Townsend, who is found raped and murdered. During the investigation of the case, a prominent local doctor, Drew Elliot, becomes a suspect due to his rumored sexual involvement with the victim. Attorney turned novelist Penn Cage, who is one of the repeat characters, is involved as the suspect has been his best friend since childhood. Elliot wants Cage to represent him.
  
  The story is quite well done and certainly holds one's attention. It contains deceit, adultery, violent drug gangs, teenage thugs, and more. There is also a great deal of exploration of the dark side of the modern day high school subculture.
  
  The story itself is quite riveting and well done. I am a bit disappointed with the author in this book as he seems to try to justify or at least turn a blind eye toward relationships between middle aged men and teenage girls. In spite of that, it is a good novel and will not bore readers.
  
  
• He's done so much better
  By AO7KJ5R31RDQV on 2006-12-06
  This novel was juvenile compared to some of Iles' other novels (The Quiet Game, Mortal Fear). It was embarrasssingly weak and at times perverse in its portrayal of the relationships bewteen the characters. It was outrageous for the author (in the end) to throw his support toward the accused (Dr. Elliot) and support sexual relations between a 40 yr. old physician and a 17 year old girl. The story dragged. It had me suspending my belief (and this is fiction!) in that Penn Cage was this quasi-superhero who could leap the tallest building. This story included the fastest-moving rumor mill ever (word travel, of course, by cell phone mostly, from the babysitter, to Penn, to Dr. Elliot's wife, et al. --- simply too much to fathom).
  This was well below the author's capability. I did not finish this novel, I refused to be a victim to this elementary (probably rushed off to press) writing. Too bad, it could have been much better.
  
  
• The Turning Angel is the only angel in this book.
  By A179GX8E3M4G52 on 2006-02-18
  Not exactly a sequel, Turning Angel is a follow-up of, in my opinion, Greg Iles best book - The Quiet Game. Iles revisits the historical city on the Mississippi, Natchez and picks up where he left off in The Quiet Game after five years, with many of the same characters. Our protagonist is again widower, Penn Cage, who has given up law to become a novelist. Sound familiar? A Mississippi Lawyer gives up Law to write novels - John Grisham. Lovely Caitlin Masters, the Netchez newspaper's publisher, now Cage's girlfriend, is back for what is effectively, a cameo appearance and his nemesis, D.A. Shadrack Johnson returns, in what is basically a story revolving around the rape/murder of the extremely popular, All American, seventeen year old Kate Townsend. But was she really the innocent young lady all of Natchez believed her to be?
  
  Turning Angel introduces some new individuals as well. First, there's Penn Cage's best friend, who once saved his life, Dr. Drew Elliott, who at forty years old was not only Kate's doctor, but her lover and eventual suspect in her brutal rape/murder. Dr. Elliott is charged with murder and Penn, after locating Elliott, a famous seventy-some year old ex-civil rights lawyer, Quentin Avery, for his defense, launches into his own investigation. Assisting Penn in this endeavor is his daughter Anne's, eighteen year old babysitter, Mia.
  
  Like the deceased Kate Townsend, Mia is smart, attractive, raised in a fatherless single parent household, sexually experimental and besotted with Penn Cage. This makes not one, but two teen girls, who were infatuated with forty year old men, which was at least one too many, not to breach my credulity.
  
  As the story moves on, we learn of abject poverty in Natchez's black community and wild drug and sex experimentation among Natchez's teen population, participating in drug/sex raves and wild parties. A Croatian exchange student named Marko Bakic ostensibly supplied the drugs, which were supplied to him by a black drug dealer named Cyrus White.
  
  Meanwhile, another student of St Stephens school (Kate's and Mia's school) drowns at one of the raves and another is severely beaten. From this point, life in Natchez seems to unravel with more murder and mayhem.
  
  Conclusion
  
  Once I accept that a sleepy little Mississippi town of twenty-five thousand and losing population could have so much pernicious underworld mischief taking place, Turning Angel settles in to be a rather good read. Greg Iles certainly knows how to write and write with interest. He doesn't let the reader catch his/her breath from the last incident before they're jerked into another crisis and Turning Angel is a convoluted series of predicaments, sometime stacked one on the other.
  
  If you like non-stop action this book is for you, but I must admit I had a problem with a few of the characters and a couple of the scenarios were over the top, which I will refrain from getting into. Another problem I had with the book is that even though Iles provided plenty of surprises along the way, I didn't find the ending to be particularly revealing, although it was dragged out nicely.
  
  All and all, once you get past the facts and incidents that ring hollow, Turning Angel is an enjoyable but not a great read. The book is five hundred action packed pages. Final rating low 4 stars.
  
  
• Stop when you're ahead!
  By A1VG0K8BQDDJH9 on 2006-02-26
  Without a doubt Mr. Iles is a great writer. His compact style, tight prose, intricate plots, and well developed characters define a man of exceptional writing abilities. The Turning Angel was such a book for the first 400 pages-then disaster. Instead of ending the story with the jilted wife's hospital room confession, Iles just could not help himself and plunged on for another 100 pages. The first 400 pages were 5 stars! The last 100 pages 2 stars. I enjoy Mr. Iles' writing immensely and fight my wife for who gets to read his new book first. But please sir, No More Dragging Out An Ending! You are too good an author for that.
  
  
  
  

• Third Degree: A Novel

• True Evil: A Novel
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• Mortal Fear
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• Dead Sleep