MISSISSIPPI BLOOD by Greg Iles, HarperCollins.

Don’t read this book until you’ve read the first two in the trilogy,

Natchez Burning, and The Bone Tree. If that sounds like a lot of reading, trust me, you’ll be glad of the heft. This series is so thrilling and surprising you’ll burn through it with the intensity of a flamethrower. Natchez is a town still living with the legacy and threat of an ageing but deadly KKK splinter group. The mayor, Penn Cage, has lost too much to the Double Eagles already. Now he fears his father and daughter will be its next victims.

Mississippi Blood is as powerful and majestic as the river itself, “a great tide of mud and water that alters the very atmosphere for miles on either side of it”. Fans will not be disappointed by the gripping court case that anchors this explosive finale.