The Death Factory by Greg Iles

Greg Iles has been following me for some time now. I first noticed it when I saw The Bone Tree staring at me from the bargain shelf at Half-Price Books. I find that I am almost always attracted to a book title that has the word bone in it. The Bone Labyrinth, The Hammer of Bones, An Echo in the Bone, City of Bones, The Lovely Bones, The Bone Collector, Dry Bones, Map of Bones, Dem Bones  . . . I at least want to pick each one of them up and have a look inside. And I could go on, of course. And the cover of The Bone Tree was also quite interesting. The dust jacket was translucent, and there was a picture on the cover of the book--a sunset . . . possibly a sunrise . . . above a spit of land extending into a large body of water --which showed through. Interesting. Not enough to get $2 out of my wallet, but interesting.

But I started seeing that book again and again. So I finally Googled around a bit, which was when I found out that it was the second book in the Natchez Burning Series, so I looked and found out that the first book in the series was called (big surprise) Natchez Burning, and the third book in the series, which will be released next week, is called Mississippi Blood. And then I found out that this series was preceded by another series which featured the same lead and several other main characters, The Penn Cage Series. That series consisted of three books, too: The Quiet Game, Turning Angel, and The Devil's Punchbowl. That seemed like too much for me to take on, as I am currently still trying to work my way back to Alan Moore's Jerusalem, but I was interested for one reason or another, and so I took a look to see if the LFPL had these books. I was surprised to see that while they did indeed have the first book, The Quiet Game, they only had it as a downloadable audio book, an ebook (with a waiting list), and a Large Print edition. But as I was searching around Iles Land, I saw that there was a thing called The Death Factory which was listed as A Penn Cage Novella. It was a tiny little thing--

--a mere 104 pages long,

which I liked, because that meant I could toss it off in just an hour or so. And I also liked that Mr. Iles had written a novel that was a part of his two trilogies. In fact, according to People In The Know (bookseriesinorder.com), it came right between the two trilogies, and I liked that, too. And, of course, even though it didn't have bone in it you have to admit that The Death Factory is a pretty cool title, right? And to top it all off, there was a copy available at The Crescent Hill Library, which is my favorite library branch, so it gave me a good excuse to make that trek.

Picked it up yesterday, finished it yesternight. And it was good.

So . . . I decided I'd take a little peak at Half-Price Books today. Just to see. And they just happened to be having a 20% off sale, so  . . . . I found a bunch of Greg Iles books. Hardbacks and paperbacks. But I couldn't remember the name of the first one in the first series. I sought and received help, and for a mere $2.99

. See, this is now it gets started.

I'll read this and it will fly buy, forcing me to find and read Turning Angel, and then it will just roll on until I've gorged on the series, ignoring all the other books I had lined up, and then I'll go see Mr. Iles in Cincinnati next month and be a gushing, blushing, fan boy and get him to see his new novel.

Oh, yeah. Because in yet another Strange Coincidence, my 

#1asked me if I'd ever been to a bookstore in Lexington called Joseph-Beth Booksellers, and I hadn't ever heard of it, so I took a look, and it looked cool, so I took a look at the events that they had coming up, and you'll never guess who's coming to that store on March 26th at 7 p.m.? Mmm-hmmm. I got Very Excited until I realized it was a Sunday night. I always have The Kids on Sunday night. And I have no pinch hitter. 

They were sad that day.

And then I thought, but there's another Joseph-Beth in Cincinnati, which isn't much farther away than Lexington . . . and MAYbe Greg Iles will be visiting there as well . . . and MAYbe it won't be on a Sunday? (Of course, Monday, Thursday, and either Friday or Saturday are also out, so my chances were slim here.) And lo . . . Monsieur Iles is going to be at that location on April 11th. Which is a TUESday. (He shoots . . . he scores! . . . the crowd goes wild!!) So ahmo go meet this fellow. If you want to ride shotgun, call it now.

By the way . . . I started looking at the other Joseph-Beth store events calendars 1, and the Crestview Hills store (2785 Dixie Highway, Crestview Hills, Kentucky) has two things that look pretty interesting: Blue Chip Jazz Band performing Friday, March 24 at 6:30 pm, and Craig Johnson discussing and signing The Highway Man Wednesday, May 31 at 7:00 pm. Craig Johnson is the man behind Longmire, which is a super-de-dooper 2 great tv show. I think the whole shebang is on Netflix now. Robert Taylor and Lou Diamond Phillips are both superb in this modern day western. And the show co-stars super hot Katee Sackhoff, if you need an added incentive.

And THAT's how I became a Greg Iles fan. Now I have to go read.

1 For some reason they make it a little tricky to navigate through the stores, so if you are trying and having as much trouble as I had, go to http://www.josephbeth.com/Landing.aspx and it will give you all of the choices from one page. I spent at least ten minutes trying to get to the Cincinnati web site, and it kept kicking me back to the Lexington one. Motherfuckers. 

2 Oh, yeah. Super-de-dooper is a Barney the Dinosaur catch phrase.  I find it amusing to use on a semi-regular basis. But it's not meant to be taken seriously--it refers to any manufacturer of dairy products. It's also not meant to be taken flippantly. I have no beef with Barney. And if you do . . . well hmmpf. Grown down, for goodness' sake.