In The Quiet Game author Greg Iles introduced us to lawyer hero Penn Cage, and now Turning Angel has us revisiting Cage, along with his best friend Drew Elliot, a highly respected doctor who had once saved Cage’s life on a hiking trip when they were boys. Being two of the most prominent members of their small town of Natchez, Drew and Penn are happy to sit on the board of their alma mater, St. Stephen’s Prep, but when the naked body of Kate Townsend, a student at the school, washes up along the banks of the Mississippi, the small community is devastated to learn that their esteemed doctor had a passionate affair with the girl and may have been involved in her murder.

Drew asks Penn to defend him, despite not exactly acting like an innocent man. Combined with a black prosecuter with a personal grudge of his own and an investigation that seems content to pin the blame on Elliott, it is up to Penn to get to the heart of the matter, starting with St. Stephen’s Prep. What he discovers when he returns to his old school is shocking, an insular world that is not as it appears, where jocks are steroid-crazed, girls are desperate for attention, and jaded teens are on the precipice of nihilism. When Penn finally arrives at the truth behind Kate Townsend’s death, his quiet little town will be forever changed.