Novelist Greg Iles, “Gothic Crime Writing in the Southern United States”, died at 65 | Mississippi

Greg Iles Mississippi The author of the Natchiz Burning Trilogy and other works is dead. He is 65 years old.

Iles has fought for decades with multiple myeloma in hematologic cancer, and his literary agent Dan Conaway posted on Facebook on Saturday.

Originally diagnosed with an incurable condition in 1996, he remained privately until he completed his last novel, Southern Man, which was published in 2024.

Iles was born in Germany but moved to Natchez. Mississippiwhen he was three years old, he established deep connections with the area. Many of his stories are based in Mississippi, including the Natchiz Burning Trilogy, historical novel suspense novel, which explores Jim Crow South of the 1960s.

Conaway describes Iles as “warm, fun, fearless, totally rich.”

“At the other end of his conversations through characters and plots, the immediate problem-solving situation is witnessing the genius at work, simple and simple,” he wrote on Saturday. “As a writer, he blends stories with humanity, deep humanity in the bones, and blends moral and political responsibility with the fierce and precise tasks of a spinning dervish or master watchmaker.”

In March 2011, Iles suffered a rupture of the aorta and a rupture of partial leg amputation, spending eight days in a medically induced coma after another driver hit his car on Highway 61 near Natchiz. He finally recovered.

Iles performed with the remaining members of the music group The Rock Botton and performed with popular writers Stephen King, Amy Tan and others.

Articles about Iles in the Guardian in 2005 describe He is “the master of Gothic crime writing in the southern United States.”