Billy Boyle (Billy Boyle World War II Mystery Series #1) »

James R. Benn is the author of Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery and The First Wave, selected by Book Sense as one of the top five mysteries of 2006 and nominated for a Dilys award. He is a librarian and lives in Hadlyme, Connecticut.

Billy Boyle goes to war.

Publishers Weekly

A promising premise-placing a callow Boston police officer in the midst of WWII intrigue-isn't fully realized in this first of a new historical series from Benn (Desperate Ground). Soon after Pearl Harbor, Billy Boyle escapes a combat tour because his Southie family pulls strings to place him on the staff of a distant relative by marriage, a general named Dwight Eisenhower, whom Billy calls "Uncle Ike." Billy's untried detective skills are soon put to the test in London, where he's assigned to unmask a spy who may compromise Allied plans to drive the Nazis out of Norway. When one of the chief suspects turns up dead, an apparent suicide, Billy displays a knack for forensics as he uncovers medical anomalies that suggest homicide. Hopefully, Uncle Ike will have more to do in future installments-and Benn will introduce the sort of character complexity that distinguishes, say, Charles Todd's WWI-era psychological whodunits (A Long Shadow, etc.) or PBS TV's Foyle's War, which also involves murder investigations during WWII. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.