Greg Iles

Greg Iles (born 1960) is a novelist who lives in Mississippi. He has published 15 novels and one novella, spanning a variety of genres.

Biography

Early life

Iles was born in 1960 in Stuttgart, Germany, where his physician father ran the U.S. Embassy Medical Clinic. He was raised in Natchez, Mississippi, the setting of many of his novels. After attending Trinity Episcopal Day School, he graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1983.

Career

Iles spent several years as a guitarist, singer, and songwriter in the band Frankly Scarlet. He quit the band after he was married and began working on his first novel, Spandau Phoenix, a thriller about Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess. Spandau Phoenix was published in 1993.

In 2002, Iles wrote the script 24 Hours from his novel of the same name. Rewritten by director Don Roos, it was renamed Trapped. Iles then rewrote the script during the shoot, at the request of the producers and actors.

In 2011, Iles was seriously injured in a traffic accident on U.S. Route 61 near Natchez. He sustained life-threatening injuries, including a ruptured aorta. He was a put into an induced coma for eight days, and lost his right leg below the knee. During his three-year recovery, he wrote three volumes of a trilogy set in Natchez, Mississippi, and featuring former prosecutor Penn Cage.