The Quiet Game by Greg Isles

The Quiet Game is the first of the Penn Cage series by Greg Isles. Penn is a former Houston assistant district attorney and successful author whose wife has died from cancer. He returns to his hometown of Natchez, Mississippi so that his parents can help his grieving daughter Annie. He befriends Caitlan Masters, the publisher of a local newspaper, and together they work to solve the murder of a black civil right’s worker that occurred back in the sixties. Officials high in the government locally and nationally do not want the case solved, and soon people are trying to kill Penn as well as anyone who might know what really happened. There are multiple side plots involving Penn’s ex-girlfriend, her father who hates him, Penn’s physician father who is being blackmailed by a murderer, and FBI agents with secrets they are afraid to tell.