Mississippi blood / Greg Iles.

Shattered by grief, Penn Cage's world is collapsing around him. The woman he loves is gone, his principles have been irrevocably compromised and his father, once a paragon of the community that Penn leads as mayor, is about to be tried for the murder of a former lover. Tom Cage has secrets, including a second son, the product of an 1960s affair with his devoted African American nurse, Viola Turner, who has been murdered. Tom Cage's murder trial sets a terrible clock in motion, and unless Penn can pierce the veil of the past and exonerate his father, his family will be destroyed. Unable to trust anyone around him, not even his own mother, Penn joins forces with Serenity Butler, a famous young black author who has come to Natchez to write about his father's case. Together, Penn and Serenity battle to crack the Double Eagles and discover the secret history of the Cage family and the South itself, a desperate move that risks the only thing they have left to gamble: their lives.