James R. Benn

Billy Boyle, a young Irish-American cop from Boston, has just made detective when World War II breaks out. His "Uncle Ike" is Dwight D. Eisenhower, plucked from obscurity to command Army forces in Europe, and he wants Billy to be his personal investigator. Accompanied by an aristocratic Polish officer in exile and a beautiful British WREN, his mission is to catch a spy who may have been planted in Beardsley Hall, where the Norwegian government in exile is in residence.

A World War II Mystery

Billy Boyle

From the Shadows

US Army detective Billy Boyle is called to investigate a mysterious murder in a Normandy farmhouse that threatens Allied operations. July, 1944, a full month after D-Day. Billy, Kaz, and Big Mike are assigned to investigate a murder close to the front lines in Normandy. An American officer has been found dead in a manor house serving as an advance headquarters outside the town of Trévières. Major Jerome was far from his own unit, arrived unexpectedly, and was murdered in the dark of night. The investigation is shrouded in secrecy, due to the highly confidential nature of the American unit headquartered nearby in the Norman hedgerow country: the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, aka, the Ghost Army. This vague name covers a thousand-man unit with a unique mission within the US Army: to impersonate other US Army units by creating deceptions using radio traffic, dummy inflatable vehicles, and sound effects, causing the enemy to think they are facing large formations. Not even the units adjacent to their positions know what they are doing. But there are German spies and informants everywhere, and Billy must tread carefully, unmasking the murder while safeguarding the secret of the Ghost Army—a secret which, if discovered, could turn the tide of war decisively against the Allies.

Solemn Graves

March, 1944: US Army Lieutenant Billy Boyle, back in England after a dangerous mission in Italy, is due for a little R&R, and also a promotion. But the now-Captain Boyle doesn't get to kick back and enjoy his leisure time because two upsetting cases fall into his lap at once. The first is a personal request from an estranged friend: Sergeant Eugene "Tree" Jackson, who grew up with Billy in Boston, is part of the 617th Tank Destroyers, the all-African American battalion poised to make history by being the US Army's first combatant African American company. But making history isn't easy, and the 617 faces racism at every turn. One of Tree's men, a gunner named Angry Smith, has been arrested for a crime he almost certainly didn't commit, and faces the gallows if the real killer isn't found. Tree knows US top brass won't care about justice in this instance, and asks Billy if he'll look into it. But Billy can't use any of his leave to investigate, because British intelligence agent Major Cosgrove puts him on a bizarre and delicate case. A British accountant has been murdered in an English village, and he may or may not have had some connection with the US Army—Billy doesn't know, because Cosgrove won't tell him. Billy is supposed to go into the village and investigate the murder, but everything seems fishy—he's not allowed to interrogate certain key witnesses, and his friends and helpers keep being whisked away. Billy is confused about whether Cosgrove even wants him to solve the murder, and why. The good news is the mysterious murder gives Billy an excuse to spend time in and around the village where Tree and his unit are stationed. If he's lucky, maybe he can get to the bottom of both mysteries—and save more than one innocent life.

A Blind Goddess

Billy Boyle is sent to the heart of the USSR to solve a double-murder at a critical turning point in the war in this latest installment of critically acclaimed James R. Benn's WWII mystery series. It’s September 1944, and the US is poised to launch Operation Frantic, a shuttle-bombing mission to be conducted by American aircraft based in Great Britain, southern Italy, and three Soviet airfields in the Ukraine. Tensions are already high between the American and Russian allies when two intelligence agents—one Soviet, one American—are found dead at Poltava, one of the Ukrainian bases. Billy is brought in to investigate, and this time he's paired, at the insistence of the Soviets, with a KGB agent who has his own political and personal agenda. In the course of an investigation that quickly spirals out of control, Billy is aided by the Night Witches, a daring regiment of young Soviet women flying at night at very low altitudes, bombing hundreds of German installations. It’s a turning point in the war, and allied efforts hang by a thread. Unless Billy and his KGB partner can solve the murders in an atmosphere of mutual distrust, Operation Frantic is doomed.

Road of Bones

Billy Boyle is at the forefront of the invasion of Sicily.

A Billy Boyle World War II Mystery

Blood Alone

A murder in wartime Switzerland reveals Swiss complicity with the Nazis in World War II, and US Army detective Billy Boyle is called to investigate. Europe, 1944: Captain Billy Boyle and his friend Lieutenant Piotr “Kaz” Kazimierz are sent to neutral Switzerland to work with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), investigating Swiss banks that are laundering looted Nazi gold. The US and Swiss governments are about to embark on diplomatic discussions regarding the Safehaven Protocols, aimed at limiting the amount of war materials exported by Switzerland to the Nazis, stemming the tide of looted gold, and preventing postwar use of Nazi wealth by war criminals. With the talks about to begin and the Gestapo ever present, the OSS wants Billy and Kaz to protect the participants, which turns out to be a very deadly task. The plans go wrong from the beginning when Billy and Kaz crashland in France. As they make their way through occupied territory to the border, they meet Anton Lasho, a member of the Sinti ethnic group, whose family was slaughtered by the Nazis, and who is, in turn, a one-man Nazi-killing machine. They’ll need his help, because as they find once they make it across the border, Swiss banks are openly laundering gold “harvested” from concentration camps, and those who are profiting will do everything they can to protect their wealth and hide their dark secrets.

The Devouring

Private Ethan Shard is part of the US Army of Occupation in Japan, 1950, knee-deep in the black market, getting rich stealing from the Army and selling to Japanese gangs. All that changes when the North Koreans invade South Korea and overwhelm the defending forces. Ethan Shard is sent to war, along with his partner-in-crime Elliot "Skitter" Skinner, part of a hastily organized force in a desperate attempt to halt the North Korean advance. In their first skirmish, the two men are captured. It will take all of Shard's strength to help survive the brutality of the climate, their captors, and their own natures in this novel of captivity, betrayal, and endurance. Praise for SHARD: The Korean War is often called the "forgotten war." SHARD, James R. Benn's exquisitely researched novel, brings that tragic era blazingly to life. After reading it, you will never forget that war, nor the men who fought it, again. -Martin Limón, author of War Women and other Sergeants Sueño and Bascom novels. Concise, well-researched, exciting, intensely personal and illuminating. SHARD, Benn's fictional exploration of the Korean War-America's "forgotten war"-is breathtaking in its detail and astounding in its emotional depth and breadth. An electrifying boots-on-the-ground look at the past that is especially pertinent today. -Stephen Mack Jones, author of the AUGUST SNOW thrillers Praise for James R. Benn's Billy Boyle WWII series: Spirited wartime storytelling. -The New York Times Book Review As is always the case with Benn's books, the painstaking research is evident, the story crackles with life, and the overlay of fictional characters onto very real historical events is seamless. -Bookpage Exceptional . . . Benn has never been better at integrating a whodunit plotline with a realistic depiction of life on or near the battlefield. -Publisher's Weekly Starred review Extensive historical and military contextual detail, copious suspense, plenty of action, and the innate politics of power are distinctive traits of this acclaimed World War II-set series. -Library Journal

Shard

Billy Boyle, World War II US Army detective and ex-Boston cop, faces his toughest investigation yet: infiltrating enemy lines in France as the Allies invade Normandy. May 1944: Captain Billy Boyle is convicted on spurious charges of black market dealings stripped of his officer’s rank, reduced to private, and sentenced to three months’ hard labor. But Billy is given an opportunity: if he takes on the incredibly dangerous mission of investigating a set of murders at the Allies’ safe house in the French town of Chaumont, he can avoid his punishment. Parachuted in as part of a three-man team the night before the Normandy invasion, he has very little time to find the killer’s identity and lead a group escape back to England, with a whole army of foes nipping at his heels.

Blue Madonna

In southern France in 1944, Captain Billy Boyle works with French Resistance fighters to protect a Royal Navy Commander, uncovering a wide web of subterfuge and betrayal in the process. Southern France, 1944: What should be a simple assignment with a Special Operations Executive officer gets complicated quickly as Billy navigates the tensions between Resistance groups in the process of gathering information on Vichy officials and other collaborators who escaped with the retreating Germans. Unexpectedly, the SOE officer has many enemies in the Resistance, linked to the failed Vercors uprising. Diana Seaton, Billy’s wartime lover, crosses paths with him as she and legendary SOE agent Christine Granville embark on a humanitarian mission on behalf of those killed while helping the SOE. The search for a witness to a deadly explosion leads Billy to the legendary 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a unit made up of Nisei soldiers that became the most highly decorated unit in thehistory of the US Army. With sacrifice and betrayal afoot, Billy doesn’t know who he can trust, or how close to death this case may bring him.

In this seventh installment of James R. Benn’s hit WWII-era mystery series, Lieutenant Billy Boyle goes undercover in the Vatican. Lieutenant Billy Boyle could have used a rest after his last case, but when his girlfriend, Diana Seaton, a British spy, goes missing in the Vatican, where she was working undercover, he insists on being assigned to a murder investigation there so he can try to help her. An American monsignor is found murdered at the foot of Death's Door, one of the five entrances to Saint Peter's Basilica. Wild Bill Donovan, head of the OSS, wants the killing investigated. The fact that the Vatican is neutral territory in German-occupied Rome is only one of the obstacles Billy must overcome. First is a harrowing journey, smuggled into Rome while avoiding the Gestapo and Allied bombs. Then he must navigate Vatican politics and personalities—some are pro-Allied, others pro-Nazi, and the rest steadfastly neutral—to learn the truth about the murdered monsignor. But that's not his only concern; just a short walk from the Vatican border is the infamous Regina Coeli prison, where Diana is being held. Can he dare a rescue, or will a failed attempt alert the Germans to his mission and risk an open violation of Vatican neutrality?

Death's Door

1943: In the midst of brutal conflict between the Allied and Japanese forces, Lieutenant Billy Boyle receives an odd assignment, sent by the powerful Kennedy family to investigate a murder in which PT skipper (and future president) Jack Kennedy has been implicated. The victim is an allied intelligence operative, whom Kennedy discovered on the island of Tulagi with his head bashed in. The first murder is followed by two more. To find the killer, Billy must sort through a tangled web of motives and identities, even as combat rages all around him.

The White Ghost

Fifty Browning Automatic Rifles have been stolen from a US Army base in Northern Ireland. His “uncle” Ike Eisenhower sends Billy to recover the weapons, which might be used in a German-sponsored IRA uprising. Bodies begin to accumulate as Billy finds unexpected challenges to his Boston-Irish upbringing and IRA sympathies. There are rogues on both sides, he learns. From the Hardcover edition.

Evil for Evil

Billy Boyle is sent to London during the Battle of Britain to investigate the murder of a Soviet official, which may be a revenge killing in response to the massacre of thousands of Polish officers, and finds his probe complicated by the fact that his friend Kaz is the prime suspect. 10,000 first printing.

Rag and Bone

The fog of war surrounding D-Day and Operation Tiger provides cover for one of Billy Boyle's grisliest investigations. When an unidentified corpse washes ashore at Slapton Sands on England's southern coast, US Army Captain Billy Boyle and his partner, Lieutenant Piotr "Kaz" Kazimierz, are assigned to investigate. The Devonshire beach is the home to Operation Tiger, the top-secret rehearsal for the approaching D-Day invasion of Normandy, and the area is restricted; no one seems to know where the corpse could have come from. Luckily, Billy and Kaz have a comfortable place to lay their heads at the end of the day: Kaz's old school chum David lives close by and has agreed to host the two men during their investigation. Glad for a distraction from his duties, Billy settles into life at David's family's fancy manor, Ashcroft, and makes it his mission to get to know its intriguing cast of characters. Just when Billy and Kaz begin to wrap up their case, they find themselves with not one soggy corpse on their hands but hundreds following a terrible tragedy during the D-Day rehearsal. To complicate things, life at Ashcroft has been getting tense: secret agendas, buried histories, and family grudges abound. Then one of the men meets a sudden demise. Was it a heart attack? Or something more sinister?

The Rest Is Silence

Praise for the Billy Boyle series: “The brash kid from Southie is still open, direct and fearless in his manner (and in his wonderfully loose-jointed use of the English language) and in no danger of losing his cover as a ‘happy-go-lucky Yank.’ But even amid the excitement of the spirited wartime storytelling, Benn allows Boyle’s experiences to change him in ways both subtle and dramatic.”—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review “Thoroughly enjoyable.”—The Seattle Times “This series brings WWII alive.”—Deadly Pleasures “Great fun. Benn knows his war history.”—The Globe and Mail “Kudos to author Benn . . . and here’s hoping that Billy will continue to make his way through his Uncle Ike’s world for many titles to come.”—Bookslut.com Billy Boyle awakens in a field hospital in Sicily with amnesia. In his pocket is a yellow silk handkerchief embroidered with the initial L. Gradually he remembers: he has been sent ashore in advance of the troops with this token from Lucky Luciano to contact the head of the Sicilian Mafia. But he must also thwart a murderous band of counterfeiters of Army scrip led by Vito Genovese. James R. Benn is the author of Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery, selected by Book Sense as one of the top five mysteries of 2006 and nominated for a Dilys Award. The First Wave was a Book Sense Notable title. Benn is a librarian and lives in Hadlyme, Connecticut. From the Hardcover edition.

Billy's task is to help arrange the surrender of the Vichy French forces. But there is dissension between the regular army, the militia and de Gaulle's Free French. American black marketeers in league with the enemy divert medical supplies to the Casbah, leading to multiple murders that Billy must solve while trying to rescue the girl he loves - who also happens to be a British spy.

The First Wave

In his time investigating crimes for both the Boston cops and General Ike's European forces, Lieutenant Billy Boyle hasn't encountered a serial killer. But now it looks like he may--a serial killer with a particularly frightening agenda. Two officers from the American troops stationed in Caserta, Italy, not far from Naples, have been found murdered. Lieutenant Norman Landry was found behind a supply tent with his neck snapped. Captain Max Galante, MD, was strangled on the same night, and his body left in a garden outside HQ. The MOs are completely different, and it seems like the officers had no connection to each other, but one frightening fact links the murders: each body was discovered with a single playing card: the Lieutenant, the ten of hearts; the Captain, the jack of hearts. The message seems to be clear--if the murderer isn't apprehended, the higher ranks will be next. Billy is sent to Italy for the investigation, which grows increasingly sinister. But he has other things on his mind, too. His girlfriend, Diana, is on a very dangerous spy mission, and Billy doesn't know when--or if--he'll see her again. To make matters worse, Billy's just learned that his baby brother, Danny, is being sent over to Europe as an infantry replacement, an incredibly dangerous assignment. And all around him, he sees GIs suffering from combat fatigue preparing for another battle. As the invasion at Anzio begins, Billy needs to keep a cool head amidst fear and terror as the killer calculates his next moves.

James R. Benn

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