There’s something about Summer that cries out for a supply of good books… the kind that I carry with me from room to room, the kind that I’ll take with me when I leave the house, to make use of any spare minutes in the day.  A couple of weeks ago, my mother loaned me one by an author I wasn’t familiar with; I’m smitten, and won’t stop until I’ve finished everything he’s written.

The Quiet Game, by Greg Iles, is a legal thriller in the style of John Grisham.  But, it’s also about grief, about love, about the sanctity of family and community.  Uncomfortable topics like race and the deep South interweave with Penn Cage’s effort to recover from the death of his young wife, caring for his four-year old daughter, and going home to Natchez, Mississippi.

I don’t want to spoil it, but the drama that follows in Natchez is one that kept me up reading late at night until the last page was finished.  I ordered the next one, from Amazon, within five minutes of finishing The Quiet Game.

What’s different about Greg Iles is that his books are not all of the same genre; I first read Third Degree, which is a thriller, but not at all the same as The Quiet Game.  I recently listened to The Footprints of God, with almost a science-fiction sheen on the tale.  24 Hours is in the mail, so I have a few days of productivity before the next distraction arrives.  Iles’ first two novels are historical fiction, set in WWII.

“Summer reading” sounds like an assignment, but for me, it’s a vacation in place.