Mark Gregory Iles (April 8, 1960 – August 15, 2025) was an American novelist who lived in Mississippi. He published seventeen novels and one novella, spanning a variety of genres.
Mark Gregory Iles was born on April 8, 1960, in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, West Germany, where his physician father ran the U.S. Embassy Medical Clinic.[1][2] He was raised in Natchez, Mississippi, the setting of many of his novels.[3] After attending Trinity Episcopal Day School, he graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1983.[4]
Iles spent several years as a guitarist, singer, and songwriter in the band Frankly Scarlet.[5] 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 1992.[2]
In 2002, Iles wrote the screenplay 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.[6]
In 2011, Iles was seriously injured in a traffic accident on U.S. Route 61 near Natchez.[7] He sustained life-threatening injuries, including a ruptured aorta.[8] He was 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.[9][10]
Iles was a member of the literary musical group The Rock Bottom Remainders, which includes or has included authors Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, Stephen King, Scott Turow, Amy Tan, Mitch Albom, Roy Blount, Jr., Matt Groening, and James McBride.[11] In July 2013, he co-authored Hard Listening (2013) with the group.[12] The ebook combines essays, fiction, musings, email exchanges and conversations, photographs, audio and video clips, and interactive quizzes to give readers a view into the private lives of the authors/musicians.
Iles was first married to Carrie McGee; the couple had two children before divorcing.[1] In 2014, he married Caroline Hungerford, with whom he also had two children.[1][4]
Iles was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer, in 1996.[4] By the early 2020s, the cancer had progressed substantially, leaving him requiring a wheelchair; he underwent a stem cell transplant before the publication of his final novel, Southern Man (2024).[4] He died from the disease at his Natchez home on August 15, 2025, at the age of 65.[1][13]
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