From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Penn Cage series and the Natchez Burning trilogy comes “a steamy, swampy tale of international nastiness” ( Kirkus Reviews ) in an electrifying thriller that reveals a world of depravity, sex, violence, and corruption in a Southern town. Penn Cage was elected mayor of Natchez, Mississippi—the hometown he returned to after the death of his wife—on a tide of support for change. But two years into his term, casino gambling has proved a sure bet for bringing in new jobs and fresh money to this fading jewel of the Old South. But deep inside the Magnolia Queen , a fantastical repurposed steamboat, a depraved hidden world draws high-stakes players with money to burn on their unquenchable taste for blood sport and the dark vices that go with it. When a childhood friend hands him blood-chilling evidence, Penn must beat the odds tracking a sophisticated killer who counters his every move, placing those nearest to him—including his young daughter, his renowned physician father, and a lover from the past—in grave danger, and all at the risk of jeopardizing forever the town he loves. With his gift for crafting “a keep-you-engaged-to-the-very-last-page thriller” ( USA TODAY ) at full throttle, Greg Iles brings back Penn Cage—the sharply honed, unforgettable hero from his most popular novels—in this electrifying suspense masterpiece. "A knockout thriller that's just the right degree of chilly to combat the dog days of summer... Iles' knack for perfectly integrating character and plot could serve as a master's class for other authors." -- The Dallas Morning News Greg Iles was the author of sixteen New York Times bestselling novels. He is best known for his Penn Cage series, the last of which is Southern Man . Iles’s novels have been made into films and published in more than thirty-five countries. He was also a member of the lit-rock group The Rock Bottom Remainders. He lived with his wife and children in Natchez, Mississippi, until his passing in 2025. The Devil’s Punchbowl CHAPTER 1 Midnight in the garden of the dead. A silver-white moon hangs high over the mirror-black river and the tired levee, shedding cold light on the Louisiana delta stretching off toward Texas. I stand among the luminous stones on the Mississippi side, shivering like the only living man for miles. At my feet lies a stark slab of granite, and under that stone lies the body of my wife. The monument at its head reads: SARAH ELIZABETH CAGE 1963–1998 Daughter. Wife. Mother. Teacher. She is loved. I haven’t sneaked into the cemetery at midnight to visit my wife’s grave. I’ve come at the urgent request of a friend. But I didn’t come here for the sake of friendship. I came out of guilt. And fear. The man I’m waiting for is forty-five years old, yet in my mind he will always be nine. That’s when our friendship peaked, during the Apollo 11 moon landing. But you don’t often make friends like those you make as a boy, so the debt is a long one. My guilt is the kind you feel when someone slips away and you don’t do enough to maintain the tie, all the more painful because over the years Tim Jessup managed to get himself into quite a bit of trouble, and after the first eight or nine times, I wasn’t there to get him out of it. My fear has nothing to do with Tim; he’s merely a messenger, one who may bear tidings I have no wish to hear. News that confirms the rumors being murmured over golf greens at the country club, bellowed between plays beside high school gridirons, and whispered through the hunting camps like a rising breeze before a storm. When Jessup asked to meet me, I resisted. He couldn’t have chosen a worse time to discover a conscience, for me or for the city. Yet in the end I agreed to hear him out. For if the rumors are true—if a uniquely disturbing evil has entered into my town—it was I who opened the door for it. I ran for mayor in a Jeffersonian fit of duty to save my hometown and, in my righteousness, was arrogant enough to believe I could deal with the devil and somehow keep our collective virtue intact. But that, I’m afraid, was wishful thinking. For months now, a sense of failure has been accreting in my chest like fibrous tissue. I’ve rarely failed at anything, and I have never quit. Most Americans are raised never to give up, and in the South that credo is practically a religion. But two years ago I stood before my wife’s grave with a full heart and the belief that I could by force of will resurrect the idyllic town that had borne me, by closing the racial wounds that had prevented it from becoming the shining beacon I knew it could be, and bringing back the prosperity it deserved. Halfway through my four-year term, I’ve learned that most people don’t want change, even when it’s in their best interest. We pay lip service to ideals, but we live by expediency and by tribal prejudice. Accepting this hypocrisy has nearly broken me. Sadly, the people closest t