Greg Iles

Greg Iles (1960-2025) was an American thriller writer, born Mark Gregory Iles in Stuttgart, West Germany, on 8 April 1960, whose novels set in Natchez, Mississippi, include the Penn Cage series and the Natchez Burning trilogy. He died at his home in Natchez on 15 August 2025, aged 65, after a 29-year illness with multiple myeloma.

His father ran the US Embassy Medical Clinic in Germany, and Iles graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1983. His first novel, Spandau Phoenix, a thriller about the Nazi Rudolf Hess, was published in 1993 and was the first of seventeen New York Times bestsellers. He adapted his novel 24 Hours for the screen as Trapped (2002). His best-known character, the former prosecutor Penn Cage, returned in a trilogy set in Natchez: Natchez Burning (2014), The Bone Tree (2015) and Mississippi Blood (2017). In 2011 he was badly injured in a car crash on US Route 61 near Natchez, losing his right leg below the knee, and took about three years to recover. In all he wrote eighteen novels and a novella, translated into more than twenty languages. He was also a member of the authors' band the Rock Bottom Remainders.

For collectors

Spandau Phoenix (1993), his debut, is the natural first target, followed by the first editions of the Natchez Burning trilogy (2014 to 2017).