Third Degree
Sometimes the gravest dangers -- and the darkest souls -- live right beside us....
In the span of twenty-four hours, every-thing Laurel Shields believes about her life and her marriage to a prominent doctor will be shattered -- if she survives a terrifying ordeal. The day begins with the jarring discovery that, soon after ending an affair, Laurel is pregnant. But when she returns home to find her husband ashen, unkempt, and on the brink of violence, a nightmare quickly unfolds. In the heart of an idyllic Mississippi town, behind the walls of her perfect house, Laurel finds herself locked in a volatile standoff with a husband she barely recognizes. Confronted with evidence of her betrayal, she must tread a deadly path between truth and deception while a ring of armed police prepares a dangerous rescue. But Laurel's greatest fear -- and her only hope -- lies with her former lover, a brave man whom fate has granted the power to save both Laurel and her children -- if she can protect his identity long enough....
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Greg Iles
Greg Iles was born in Germany in 1960, where his father ran the US Embassy Medical Clinic during the height of the Cold War. His mother was raised on a subsistence farm in Louisiana and began picking cotton at the age of three. Iles spent his youth in Natchez, Mississippi, and graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1983. While attending Ole Miss, Greg lived in the cabin where William Faulkner and his brothers listened to countless stories told by “Mammy Callie,” their beloved nanny, who had been born enslaved.
Iles wrote his first novel in 1993, a thriller about Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess, which became the first of seventeen New York Times bestsellers. Primarily set in the Deep South, his later novels have been made into films, translated into more than twenty languages, and published in more than thirty-five countries worldwide. His new novel will continue the story of Penn Cage, after the epic trilogy that ended with New York Times #1 bestseller Mississippi Blood.
Iles is a member of the legendary lit-rock group “The Rock Bottom Remainders.” Like bandmate Stephen King, Greg returned to the musical stage after recovering from his injuries, and joined the band for their "final" two shows in Los Angeles in 2012. A nonfiction memoir by the band, titled Hard Listening, was published in 2018, but by then the band had begun playing shows again. In 2020 they released a social-distancing video produced by Greg and his son Mark, called "DON'T Stand By Me!" They just don't know when to quit.
Iles passed away from a 29-year battle with Mulitple Myeloma on August 15, 2025. He lived in Natchez, Mississippi with his wife Caroline and had four children.
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