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7b48521
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some harsher truths: that the world they will find beyond the borders of Mississippi looks very different from the one that nurtured them to this point; that the whites among them might soon find themselves the targets of prejudice for a change;
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Greg Iles |
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377260c
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Where are you going?" Quentin asks. "To do my job. You need to start thinking about whether you've got what it takes to do yours." "Hey, don't--" I slam the door and hurry down the hall. The Brightside Manor Apartments stand like a visual reprimand to every liberal fantasy of government-subsidized housing. The dilapidated buildings look like sets built for a Blaxploitation flick from the seventies, like you could walk up and push them down ..
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Greg Iles |
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85f1f40
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Some stories must wait to be told. Any writer worth his salt knows this. Sometimes you wait for events to percolate in your subconscious until a deeper truth emerges; other times you're simply waiting for the principals to die. Sometimes it's both. This story is like that.
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Greg Iles |
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9dac431
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At least fifty people are sitting or standing within sight of me. The oldest ones sit on their stoops beneath dented metal awnings. The middle-aged stand in little knots, the men sharing bottles wrapped in paper sacks, the women holding babies. I don't see any teenagers--it's as though they've been drafted for some special war--but several toddlers walk unsupervised through the parking lot. Three of them are naked.
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Greg Iles |
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119ca3a
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to yearn for ignorance is to embrace the wishful thinking of a child. For once the stone hits the surface of the pond, the ripples never really stop.
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Greg Iles |
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09a7088
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Now it turns out he was having sex with his babysitter, and they're so pissed off they're about to pop. But their anger's not really about Kate, you know? It's about them. They feel betrayed. They put him up on a pedestal, and then he committed the crime of being human. So fuck him, right? Never mind that Kate was two weeks shy of eighteen, and on the make for exactly the kind of affair she had with Drew.
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Greg Iles |
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e0a0a81
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At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. --Aristotle
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Greg Iles |
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46ab940
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Every son eventually learns his daddy has feet of clay. You just happen to have a father of singular rectitude, so it took until you were forty-five. That doesn't make it any less painful.
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Greg Iles |
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4e87afd
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Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
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Greg Iles |
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473ea08
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You said you had enough evidence to convict Jonathan Sands of money laundering on your own." "That's correct." "I'd like to see that evidence." "I'd like a chocolate chip cookie without the chips." "Mr. Cage--"
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Greg Iles |
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7445ecd
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he know how to work the computers, navigate our intranet? Would he know the user names or passwords of the reporters?" "No. But if Nick didn't delete the files, then it could be anybody. How the hell do we"
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Greg Iles |
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63c1e26
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You want the party line or the real answer?" "You know what I want." His eyes shine as he shakes his head. "Penn, these girls...they're not the girls we went to school with, okay? There's a group of girls here who have a club called the Bald Eagles. Know why?" "Do I want to know?" "They all shave their pussies." "Is that a big deal?" Wade raises his eyebrows. "They're in the eighth grade." "Jesus." Even in our frankest discussions, Mia and ..
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Greg Iles |
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d74789e
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I'm a big believer in first lines. If a writer doesn't grab you with their first sentence, even in a literary novel, they might need to think about another line of work.
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Greg Iles |
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a23cfc4
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he committed such a heinous act, would have owned up to it and taken his punishment like a man, as the archaic phrase goes. That may be a quaint and sexist notion these days, but some of what is best about the South is archaic. The tragedy is that it should be so.
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Greg Iles |
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55a0156
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About twenty minutes ago, during a commercial break, Melba had thought she'd heard a helicopter in the distance. Tom had been unable to hear it, but that was no surprise, given his progressive hearing loss, and she'd heard nothing since. He told her it was probably nothing to worry about. Statistically, Mississippi had some of the worst drivers in the nation, so LifeFlight helicopters were common at all hours, even over rural counties.
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Greg Iles |
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4d26b5e
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have resolved a simple thing: I will do those things which make me happy today, and which I can also live with ten years from now.
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Greg Iles |
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f1bc417
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When everything is at risk, good judgment, not haste, makes the difference between life and death. Panic is the enemy....
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Greg Iles |
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5e8cb24
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Men of integrity and courage are rare these days.
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Greg Iles |
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b1ba7df
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came across a letter by T. S. Eliot, who I had always vaguely assumed was English. To my surprise, I discovered that Eliot had grown up along the same river I had, in St. Louis, and to a friend he wrote this about the Mississippi: I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or Ne..
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Greg Iles |
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a3ad420
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We rarely act from logic when facing the critical choices of our lives.
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Greg Iles |
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2d59d23
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Posts oriented into a Woodhenge, a huge circle for astronomical observations." "Like Stonehenge?" "Exactly like that. Or Cahokia, a similar site up in Illinois."
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Greg Iles |
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6dfafda
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Marrying someone you don't love is a sin. Because it sends both of you to hell. It destroys the other person first, but in the end it gets you, too. The magnitude of what you've done, the damage you've caused by forcing you both to live a lie.
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Greg Iles |
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0b8b417
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Rumor runs through the community like a plague, and truth is the first casualty.
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Greg Iles |
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d8c6888
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If physicists want to develop a time machine, they should explore fear. Fear dilates and compresses time without limit. For desperate people awaiting rescue, every instant stretches into unendurable agony; for those awaiting death by cancer, the earth spins relentlessly, shortening the days until they pass like fanned pages in a book. Trapped in our bodies, perception is all, and the engine of perception is hunger for life.
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perception
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Greg Iles |
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62aed3a
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behind them.
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Greg Iles |
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e0bc42d
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named False Witness the fourth-best legal thriller ever written." "After what?" "Anatomy of a Murder , The Caine Mutiny , and Presumed Innocent."
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Greg Iles |
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bace59e
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Oh. Does Mississippi have some kind of grave-desecration statute? I know they differ from state to state." "Mississippi does, thank God. Anybody who comes across human remains in this state must report them. And a discovery like that stops whatever's going on around it. Even major construction. Doesn't matter whether the land is public or private."
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Greg Iles |
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9b2bf33
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something new every time." The sound of forest insects comes from the phone. Then the screen lights up with the green sweep of my backyard. Even from the kitchen counter, I can see Jet's naked body sitting astride mine on the patio steamer chair. "That didn't come off Pornhub," Paul says. "That's the real deal."
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Greg Iles |
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5840afd
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You ever read American Tabloid, by James Ellroy?
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Greg Iles |
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aa6df45
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Old Shelby said something interesting about facts: 'People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.
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Greg Iles |
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3eb5180
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The Secret History.
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Greg Iles |
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f064d40
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county rescue boat to recover the corpse. Normally, I would
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Greg Iles |
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da194b1
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For only with the deepest knowledge can one diagnose that most elusive of conditions: the truth.
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Greg Iles |
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b025ab5
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Caitlin's ambition is like a third person in the car.
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Greg Iles |
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3fd8af1
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Donna Tartt's The Secret History. Annie
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Greg Iles |
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8bd7c65
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Reality abides in the eyes.
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Greg Iles |