The Quiet Game, by Greg Iles

This 20 hour audiobook was downloaded free from NetLibrary, and it was just too long. And it was very much like a Pat Conroy novel: seedy and southern with a progressive social message and religious hypocrites abounding.

A top flight prosecutor, Penn Cage (I can hear the rimshot), who lost his wife to cancer, returns to his ancestral home with his little girl to get a rest. This does not work out. He ends up getting involved in an old civil right murder that was unsolved, but has plenty of chickens coming home to roost.

Our protagonist is further distracted by a crusading young newspaper publisher who wants to get a Pulitzer out of the turmoil. (Yes, she is hot.) And his old love interest (maybe hotter), who happens to be the daughter of a corrupt local power broker, also comes home after separating from her husband.

Crime novel turns romance turns courtroom drama over a long story with too many players. Yes, some of them are very well written, and probably worthy of their own books, but we are stuck with most of them until the end.

This would have been 3 stars if it had been half as long. It's downgraded to 2.