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True Evil

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Overview

If you wanted to kill your spouse and get away with it, you had to do something truly ingenious: something that wouldn't even be perceived as murder. And that was the service that Andrew Rusk had found a way to provide. Like any quality product, it did not come cheap. Nor did it come quickly. And perhaps most important of all, it was not for those with weak constitutions. Demand was high, of course, but few people were truly suitable clients. It took a deep-rooted hatred to watch your spouse die in agony, knowing that you had brought about that pain. But on the other hand, some people bore up remarkably well. With these words, New York Times bestselling author Greg Iles returns to his trademark Southern milieu in this terrifying thriller, an unnerving tale of evil lurking beneath the veneer of idyllic suburban life. Brimming with the masterful suspense and intense psychological drama that made Turning Angel, Blood Memory, and The Quiet Game bestsellers, True Evil tells the chilling story of a divorce attorney who may be orchestrating the deaths of his clients' spouses, bringing new meaning to the phrase 'til death do us part.

Editorial Reviews

Starred Review. Smooth prose, psychological depth and crafty plotting lift bestseller Iles's latest suspense thriller, which puts a fresh twist on a familiar theme-the cat-and-mouse game between an FBI agent and a fiendishly-clever serial killer. One personal tragedy after another has struck Alexandra Morse, a rising star in the FBI who specializes in hostage negotiation: her father's shooting death in a robbery, her mother's diagnosis of advanced ovarian cancer, and a misstep on the job that left her face scarred and a fellow agent dead. Now Alex's sister, Grace, lies dying in a Jackson, Miss., hospital after suffering a stroke. Alex arrives from Washington just in time to hear Grace say that her husband has murdered her. After Grace's death, Alex learns that Dr. Eldon Tarver, a brilliant scientist in need of funds for research into developing a biological superweapon, has teamed with a Mississippi divorce attorney who offers select clients the opportunity to avoid a protracted court fight by arranging for their spouses to die. When Alex identifies the next intended victim, Dr. Chris Shepard, she goes undercover as one of the idealistic doctor's patients and soon finds herself in a race against Tarver as well as her own superiors, who have not sanctioned her investigation. This pulse-pounder is sure to be another bestseller for Iles (Turning Angel). -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Greg Iles

Greg Iles was born in Germany, where his father ran the US Embassy Medical Clinic during the height of the Cold War. He was raised in Natchez, Mississippi, and graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1983. Iles worked for several years as guitarist and vocalist for the band Frankly Scarlet, but after getting married in 1989, decided that a more stable lifestyle was in order. His first novel, Spandau Phoenix, a thriller about Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess, was published in 1992 and became a New York Times bestseller. Iles's second novel, Black Cross, a thriller set during the Holocaust in Germany, was awarded the Mississippi Author's Award for Fiction. Previous winners include Richard Ford, and Donna Tartt. Black Cross also received the Bertelsmann Award for New Fiction, after Iles was nominated for the prize by John Grisham. In 1997, with his third novel, Iles shifted settings from Europe to his native South. Mortal Fear, a New York Times bestseller, traces a duel between a computer sysop running an exclusive sexual-fantasy chatroom and the serial killer who haunts it. Of Iles's next novel, Jeffery Deaver wrote: "What a compelling story! The Quiet Game takes us on an engrossing, page-turning ride into the heart of terror, past and present, in a Southern town." Iles' last book, 24 Hours, was hailed by critics as "a tour de force of suspense" (The Memphis Commercial Appeal), "diabolical" (People), and "brilliantly plotted bone-chilling suspense" (Publishers Weekly). Iles's writing is so immediate that we feel we know his characters personally, and that Penn Cage's search for justice becomes ours." Iles lives in Natchez, Mississippi, with his wife and two children, and is now at work on his sixth novel. For relaxation, he writes and records original music with a few close friends from his "former life."

Customer Reviews

  • 5 stars out of 5Greg Isles doing what he does best

    Posted May 29, 2009 by Doctor My Eyes, Scottsdale, Arizona

    This is another very solid effort from an author who has yet to receive the mass appeal that his writing deserves. The characters are three-dimensional, with flaws and scars (some literal and some figurative). The storyline is well-crafted, and the medical science is interesting and believable. The antagonists give a new meaning to the term "cold hard killers," strange bedfellows who work closely but only actually see each other a handful of times. Agent Morse, in a definitive "boy [girl] who cried wolf" role, is unrelenting in her efforts to save a stranger from being the next victim, while struggling with her own demons and tragedies. "True Evil" is an intelligent thriller, and Greg Isles is a writer who respects his audience.

  • 5 stars out of 5An excellent thriller

    Posted November 02, 2009 by P. Ryan, Upstate NY

    This book starts off with a chapter or two of telling rather than showing, which had me worried there for a little while, but then it picked up and turned into a terrific thriller--high stakes and a "can it be stopped?" plot. The protagonist is a female FBI agent trying, among other things, to help a young doctor whose wife may or may not have arranged to have him die of cancer. The ultimate villain! Smart, conscienceless, the perfect kick-ass sociopath.

Additional Info

Imprint

Scribner

Filesize

959.45 KB

Number of Pages

528

eBook ISBN

9781416545330

Excerpt from: True Evil by Greg Iles

Chapter One


Alex Morse charged through the lobby of the new University Medical Center like a doctor to a code call, but she was no doctor. She was a hostage negotiator for the FBI. Twenty minutes earlier, Alex had deplaned from a flight from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Jackson, Mississippi, a flight prompted by her older sister's sudden collapse at a Little League baseball game. This year had been plagued by injury and death, and there was more to come -- Alex could feel it.

Sighting the elevators, she checked the overhead display and saw that a car was descending. She hit the call button and started bouncing on her toes. Hospitals, she thought bitterly. She'd practically just gotten out of one herself. But the chain of tragedy had started with her father. Five months ago Jim Morse had died in this very hospital, after being shot during a robbery. Two months after that, Alex's mother had been diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. She had already outlived her prognosis, but wasn't expected to survive the week. Then came Alex's accident. And now Grace --

A bell dinged softly, and the elevator opened.

A young woman wearing a white coat over street clothes leaned against the rear wall in a posture of absolute exhaustion. Intern, Alex guessed. She'd met enough of them during the past month. The woman glanced up as Alex entered the car, then looked down. Then she looked up again. Alex had endured this double take so many times since the shooting that she no longer got angry. Just depressed.

"What floor?" asked the young woman, raising her hand to the panel and trying hard not to stare.

"Neuro ICU," said Alex, stabbing the 4 with her finger.

"I'm going down to the basement," said the intern, who looked maybe twenty-six -- four years younger than Alex. "But it'll take you right up after that."

Alex nodded, then stood erect and watched the glowing numbers change above her head. After her mother's diagnosis, she'd begun commuting by plane from Washington, D.C. -- where she was based then -- to Mississippi to relieve Grace, who was struggling to teach full-time and also to care for their mother at night. Unlike J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, the modern Bureau tried to be understanding about family problems, but in Alex's case the deputy director had made his position clear: time off to attend a funeral was one thing, regularly commuting a thousand miles to be present for chemotherapy was another. But Alex had not listened. She'd bucked the system and learned to live without sleep. She told herself she could hack the pressure, and she did -- right up until the moment she cracked. The problem was, she hadn't realized she'd cracked until she caught part of a shotgun blast in her right shoulder and face. Her vest had protected the shoulder, but her face was still an open question.

For a hostage negotiator, Alex had committed the ultimate sin, and she'd come close to paying the ultimate price. Because the shooter had fired through a plate-glass partition, what would have been a miraculous escape (being grazed by a couple of pellets that could have blown her brains out but hadn't) became a life-altering trauma. A blizzard of glass tore through her cheek, sinuses, and jaw, lacerating her skin and ripping away tissue and bone. The plastic surgeons had promised great things, but so far the results were less than stellar. They'd told her that in time the angry pink worms would whiten (they could do little to repair the "punctate" depressions in her cheek), and that laymen wouldn't even notice the damage. Alex wasn't convinced. But in the grand scheme of things, what did vanity matter? Five seconds after she was shot, someone else had paid the ultimate price for her mistake.