Frank H. (perryfran) reviewed on 1/2/2025 + 1231 more book reviews

This is the first novel in Benn's series of WWII mysteries featuring Billy Boyle. I have had this book on my shelves along with a few others in the series for a few years and finally decided to give the series a try. Billy Boyle is a detective on the Boston PD when WWII hits America after Pearl Harbor in 1941. Billy is the nephew of General Dwight Eisenhower who is commanding the U.S. forces in Europe. So when Billy enlists, he is able to become a lieutenant and gets to serve under Ike as his personal investigator. As soon as he gets to England, Billy is thrown into an investigation to help find a spy who may divulge Allied plans to invade Norway (Operation Jupiter) and drive out the Nazis. The Norwegian King and his government have fled Norway along with millions in gold and are quartered in England. Then one of the Norwegian officials dies of apparent suicide or is it murder? Now Billy is looking for both a spy and a murderer.

I enjoyed this one for the most part. I thought Benn did a good job in developing the characters in the book. It was very well researched and used actual events as its background. The overall tone of the novel was somewhat mild with very little harsh language or graphic violence and with some humor thrown in. As others have pointed out, this may have been intended as a YA novel. But I liked this enough to read more in this series at some point.

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