Penn Cage leads a dramatic life — he’s a Houston prosecutor turned novelist turned mayor of his hometown of Natchez, Miss. When his father, a beloved local doctor, was charged with murdering his former nurse — who was his long-ago lover — and went on the run, Cage dug for the truth, finding links to 1960s lynchings by a vicious KKK offshoot and to contemporary corruption and racism. Cage ultimately went outside the law to destroy the criminals; his fiancée and others were killed along the way.

More recently, while Cage was living in nearby Bienville, his daughter was shot and wounded during a rap concert and soon after, the mayor, who was Black, gay and relatively progressive, was murdered in cold blood. As racial tensions consumed the town, an ambitious war hero turned radio host named Robert E. Lee White caught Cage’s attention as he tried to capitalize on the chaotic situation.

Again, Cage survived shootouts and broke the law for the sake of justice. Cage’s saga exists only in Greg Iles’ bestselling books, most famously his 2,300-page “Natchez Burning” trilogy and now his latest, “Southern Man,” which runs nearly a thousand pages itself. They’re thrillers with the stakes raised by Iles’ exploration of the racism that has long ruled the South and haunted the nation.

But Iles’ own life story is novel-worthy. It’s an epic with twists and turns and his own brushes with death. After nearly a decade playing guitar in the band Frankly Scarlet, Iles.