Marshall McEwan (who is not Marshall McLuhan, disappointingly) ran away from small-town Mississippi to become a journalist in D.C. He found great success there as  a talking head on what passes for TV news, talking down with great condescension about the place that gave him birth as East Coast prats drank their wine and nodded approvingly. But then his dad, who runs the Bienville Watchman,  begins declining — and so did the paper the family had run for generations. Were it not for his mother, he might have just stayed in DC, being a self-absorbed careerist and hiding from his pain, but thanks to momsie he felt compelled to move back home and take care of the patriarch and the family enterprise, a century-old newspaper the old man’s dementia was running into the ground. McEwan finds relief from responsibility and his incredibly tense paternal relationship by (1) having an affair with his best friend’s wife, who he has pined for since they were kids and figures that’s excuse enough and (2) inciting the wrath of a barely-concealed secret society who run all political and business affairs in Bienville. When his friend and mentor Buck Ferris is most foully moirdered after discovering something that will wreck a multimillion dollar business deal,  Marshall girds his loins, starts his press, and prepares to anger men who have been running things since the 19th century. Iles’ ability to create an utterly compelling drama with complex character relationships here does battle with weird sex scenes, cardboard cutouts of antagonists, and endless Author on Board pontificating. I acutely disliked the novel and yet found myself continuing to read it. There’s some draw from learning about this cabal that controls the town — a social club of vested financial interests unafraid of arranging ‘accidents’ to get rid of troublemakers — and from the complex character relationships. Marshall and his best friend have….an interesting relationship, in that they’re both infatuated with the same woman and have opposing interests in town, and yet endured the Terror War together and are bonded in a way.  Marshall’s enemies are not remotely interesting in themselves: they are cigar-smoking, brandy-drinking stock villains taken right from the Hackneyed Handbook of Modern Drivel. Marshall and his father also have a rough relationship, being driven apart by the drowning of Marshall’s brother Adam, and then the drowning of Marshall’s son Adam. The interesting and the eye-rolling spar throughout the novel, and the interesting prevails enough that I finished the thing despite occasional impulses to chuck it into the Goodwill box. The worst part is that while the novel could address serious themes – idealism and avarice, sacrificing principle for ‘The Greater Good’, etc, we don’t really get that. Instead we get a selfish and largely unlikable main character, who, when he is tempted, immediately finds the temptation removed and has the choice made for him, which is absolutely unsatisfying. His actions are motivated not by agonized attempts to do Good, but to not get himself or his narcissistic partner in bed killed. Greg Iles has done far superior work, and with less discussion of characters’ genitalia.