Natchez Burning by Greg Iles

This was almost a perfect five star book. The pace was terrific, the dialogue was compelling, the combination of characters worked well together and were interesting people to read about and interact with. 

Set in Natchez where I travel regularly in my work on the Cruise boat I felt the community - actually both communities - Natchez and across the river Vidalia. The author gave us his familiarity with the place and people. This was outstanding.

The tension was charged with the racial context of KKK and a past of killings and burnings that were part of the sixties, but that continue today barely beneath the surface. The title suggests the legendary movie Mississippi Burning with good cause. Hatred is a vile element of the human story and racial hatred is especially vile since it does not respond to a person, but to a bland and stupid sense of superiority based on nothing but color.

This kind of hatred leads to violence, but it does not lead to dialogue and peaceful resolution. It is a blind rage and when the KKK and putrid offshoots begin to lash out it escalates to even more violence. 

So we have a mayor who has feels the compulsion to protect his father, a doctor, who would seem to have been the Mother Teresa of the region, but is now confronted with a racial murder charge, a potential half brother who wants the doctor prosecuted despite age and infirmities.

The Doctor has a close friend in an ex-Texas Ranger and the Mayor has a finance who is a Pulitzer prize winning journalist. Outside the family bonds is a crusading investigator who wants to nail the KKK for killing his friend and mentor and a DA who has a vendetta against the mayor.

Then there are the evil men insinuated into community wealth, the Louisiana Police force and a pack between murderers and torturers forming a formidable group of adversaries.

Normally I hate books that exceed the good taste of a 400 page novel and this almost doubles that, but it is written so well that it flies by and pages are gone in a breathless desire to get to the end. And luckily, the pages are so well written that you do not want to skim, you want to read and be involved.

So why only four stars? Well it is the ending. Only a part of the loose ends are tied up. There is not even an attempt to put some of the story lines to rest when it comes to a halt. For me, it is not even the most compelling storyline that ends. So what comes next - another book, I assume and if that is the case I would have liked to see PART One somewhere at the beginning.