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?**

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 Captain Kiril Sidorov of the Red Air Force, a dangerous rival of Billy’s from past encounters.   In the course of an investigation that quickly sprawls out of control, Billy is aided by the Night Witches, a daring regiment...

In the eighteenth installment in this fan-favorite WWII mystery series, US Army Captain Billy Boyle investigates a murder in a charming English village, where personal vendettas tangle with wartime espionage.Norfolk, England, November 1944: After a series of dangerous missions in the South of France, US Army Captain Billy Boyle is finally on leave, and is settling into a peaceful rest at the country estate of Sir Richard Seaton, the father of Billy’s British lover, Diana. Seaton Manor is a comfortable haven, and Billy is eager to spend a few precious days in Diana’s company pretending the war is far away.Unfortunately, Billy’s leave is cut short when a crashed German bomber resurfaces off the coast with the corpse of a British officer in the pilot seat. The nearby village of Slewford hosts a top-secret military intelligence operation, home to high-ranking German POWs, and so the crash is a matter of national security. Billy is assigned by the...

In the 14th Billy Boyle mystery, US Army detective Billy Boyle and Lieutenant Kazimierz travel into the heart of Nazi-occupied Paris on a dangerous mission: ensure a traitor to the French Resistance unwittingly carries out a high-stakes deception campaign. August, 1944: US Army detective Billy Boyle is assigned to track down a French traitor, code-named Atlantik, who is delivering classified Allied plans to German leaders in occupied Paris. The Resistance is also hot on his trail and out for blood, after Atlantik's previous betrayals led to the death of many of their members. But the plans Atlantik carries were leaked on purpose, a ruse devised to obscure the Allied army's real intentions to bypass Paris in a race to the German border. Now Billy and Kaz are assigned to the Resistance with orders to not let them capture the traitor: the deception campaign is too important. Playing a delicate game, the chase must be close enough to spur the traitor on and visible...

To solve a murder at an English airbase, US Army Captain Billy Boyle must immerse himself in the fascinating and secretive world of WWII radio espionage.Christmas Day 1944: After his last mission put him in the tailspin of the Battle of the Bulge, Captain Billy Boyle travels to southeast England to visit his girlfriend, Diana Seaton, for a brief holiday respite. Diana is engaged in classified work at RAF Hawkinge, including Operation Corona, which recruits German-speaking Women’s Auxiliary Air Force members—many of them Jewish refugees from the Kindertransport rescue—to countermand German orders and direct night fighters away from Allied bombers.It’s fascinating and critical espionage work, but it’s laced with peril, as Billy finds out. On a scenic Christmas walk along the White Cliffs of Dover, Billy and Diana stumble upon the dead body of a US Air Force officer. In the dead man’s pocket are papers with highly confidential...

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...

Just days after the Liberation of Paris, Billy and Kaz are brought to Saint Albans Convalescent Hospital in the English countryside. Kaz has been diagnosed with a heart condition, and Billy is dealing with emotional exhaustion and his recent methamphetamine abuse. Meanwhile, Billy's love, Diana Seaton, has been taken to Ravensbruck, the Nazi concentration camp for women, and Kaz's sister, Angelika, who he recently learned was alive and working with the Polish Underground, has also been captured and transported to Ravensbruck. This news is brought by (retired) British Major Cosgrove, whose asks Billy for help, unofficially, in solving what he thinks was the murder of a British agent recuperating at Saint Albans. The convalescent hospital is really a secret installation for those in the world of clandestine warfare to recover from wounds, physical and emotional. Some are allowed to leave; others are deemed security risks and are kept in virtual imprisonment. When a second body...

An investigation into a gang of Nazi-affiliated art thieves leads Billy Boyle and his comrades directly into the line of fire at the catastrophic Battle of the Bulge.Winter 1944: Months after the Liberation of France, ex-Boston cop Billy Boyle finds himself in a Paris reeling from the carnage it has endured but hopeful that an end to war is in sight. When Billy finds a rare piece of artwork after a tense shoot-out in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, he thinks it could be connected to the Syndicat du Renard, a shadowy network of Nazi sympathizers known to be smuggling stolen artwork out of France.Trailing the Syndicat, Billy discovers that someone with a high level of communications clearance—someone in the Phantom regiment of the British Army—may be using his position to aid the thieves. Billy, determined to stop the abettor, heads up to the frontlines where he experiences a last-ditch battle against overwhelming odds. There, the ruinous Battle of the...

These dazzling stories show a crime fiction veteran at the height of his career.In his first-ever collection, the award-winning author of the Billy Boyle World War II mysteries presents an eclectic mix of new and previously published mystery stories rife with historical detail and riveting wartime storytelling.“The Horse Chestnut Tree” explores betrayal and murder during the American Revolution. In the speculative work “Glass,” an atomic supercollider and the breakdown of the time-space continuum change the lives of two cousins devoured by greed. “Vengeance Weapon,” a historical thriller about an enslaved Jewish laborer working at the Dora concentration camp, looks at how far someone will go to get revenge. And for his Billy Boyle fans, Benn delivers “Irish Tommy,” a police procedural set in 1944 Boston featuring Billy’s father and uncle.Full of terror, action, amusement, and bliss, The Refusal Camp is...

It's late May 1944. Captain Billy Boyle is court-martialed on spurious charges of black market dealings. The chief witness against him is Archie Chapman, the London gangster last seen in Rag and Bone, and Boyle is convicted. Stripped of his officer's rank, reduced to private, and sentenced to three month's hard labor, Boyle is given an opportunity: he can avoid his punishment if he accepts a dangerous mission. In the town of Chaumont, a "petite chateau" on the outskirts of town serves as a safe house for the Allies. The chateau has a secret chamber and tunnel, first used to hide escaping Huguenots in the 17th century. But someone is killing the people who have passed through the safe house. Two officers, one a British escaped POW and the other an American pilot, have been murdered. Billy is parachuted in as part of a three-man team on June 5, 1944, the night before the Normandy invasion. Billy must solve the mystery of who is behind the murders, then lead...

Secrets trail an American soldier from his Depression upbringing to the cold winter battles in the Ardennes Forest in the last months of World War II, and through the post-war decades, as he struggles to keep his family from being torn apart while keeping the truth buried close to his heart.Clay Brock, proprietor of Jake's Tavern, has endured terrible losses throughout his life. In 1964, he is working to build a life for his wife and son, only to see everything he's worked for threatened by forces beyond his control. To keep his family from breaking apart, he must confront the very secret he has kept buried. For Clay, the war has never been over, and his foxhole buddy Jake Burnett never far from his thoughts. At two crucial points in his life, as a young father and later as an old man at the dawn of a new and unfamiliar century, his memories draw him back until he must confront them and speak the truth. But at what cost?

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. Bennis 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 Wavewas a Book Sense Notable title. Benn is a librarian and lives in Hadlyme, Connecticut. From the Hardcover edition.