Greg Iles was born in Germany in 1960, where his father ran the US Embassy Medical Clinic during the height of the Cold War. Iles spent his youth in Natchez, Mississippi, and graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1983. While attending Ole Miss, Iles lived in the cabin where William Faulkner and his brothers listened to countless stories told by “Mammy Callie,” their beloved nanny, who had been born a slave.Iles's new standalone thriller is Cemetery Road.
One of six books the author recommended at The Week magazine:
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris (1988).Read about another entry on the list.
Lambs proves "genre" authors can be every bit as observant and insightful as literary giants. Of a female hostage in a pit: "...in the absolute dark, she could hear the tiny clicksher eyes made when she blinked." Try it sometime. Harris knows of what he writes, at every level.
The Silence of The Lambs is among Kathy Reichs's six best books, Matt Suddain's five great meals from literature, Elizabeth Heiter's ten favorite serial killer novels, Jill Boyd's five books with the worst fictional characters to invite to Thanksgiving, Monique Alice's six great fictional evil geniuses, sixteen book-to-movie adaptations that won Academy Awards. Red Dragon appears on Kimberly Turner's list of the ten most disturbing sociopaths in literature and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best dragons in literature and ten of the best tattoos in literature, and the (U.K.) Telegraph 110 best books; Andrew Gross says "it should be taught as [a text] in Thriller 101."
--Marshal Zeringue
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