Product Description

“This book has got it all—an instant classic.”—Lee Child, author of The Hard Way

“A tale as tight as a drum. Doesn’t get any better than this.”—Mary-Ann Tirone Smith, author of the Poppy Rice mysteries

“It is a pleasure marching off to war with spirited Billy Boyle. He is a charmer, richly imagined and vividly rendered. And he tells a finely suspenseful yarn.”—Dan Fesperman, author of The Prisoner of Guantánamo

“Rich with atmosphere. . . . A treat from start to finish.”—Owen Parry, author of the Abel Jones mysteries

What’s a twenty-two-year-old Irish cop from Boston doing at Beardsley Hall having lunch with Haakon, King of Norway, and the rest of the Norwegian government in exile? Billy Boyle himself wonders. Back home, he’d just made detective (with a little help from family and friends) when war was declared. Unwilling to fight—and perhaps die—for England, he was relieved when his mother wangled a job for him on the staff of a general married to her distant cousin, Mamie. But the general turns out to be Dwight D. Eisenhower; his headquarters are in London, which is undergoing the Blitz; and Uncle Ike has a special assignment for Billy: He wants Billy to be his personal investigator.

Operation Jupiter, the impending invasion of Norway, is being planned. Billy is to catch a spy amongst the Norwegians. He doubts his own abilities, and a theft and two murders test his investigative powers. But to his own surprise, Billy proves to be a better detective than anyone suspected.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #115527 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-01
• Released on: 2007-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.65" h x .77" w x 5.50" l, .69 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From 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 © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Billy Boyle is a Boston cop, from a family of Boston cops, but he is a reluctant soldier who prefers walking the beat in Southie to fighting Nazis. Using her cousin by marriage, a certain General Eisenhower, Billy's mother lands her son a seemingly soft job with Ike's staff in London. But Ike wants Billy to use his investigative know-how to sniff out a possible spy in the Allies' inner circle. Young Billy, oversold by his mother as a crackerjack detective, is definitely in over his head, especially when it turns out that the apparent suicide of a Norwegian dignitary may have been the work of the spy. Benn has a tantalizing premise here, but he doesn't quite deliver on it: his prose slips into wartime cliches a little too often, and the supporting love story reeks of WWII melodrama. Yet the action builds to a suspenseful climax, and there is even a hint of moral ambiguity in the wrap-up. A not entirely satisfactory debut, then, but Ken Follett fans will want to give Billy and his uncle a chance to develop. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"This book has got it all—an instant classic."—Lee Child

"Spirited wartime storytelling."—The New York Times Book Review

"A meaty, old-fashioned, and thoroughly enjoyable tale of WWII-era murder and espionage."—The Seattle Times

"One of the best books I've read this year."—Mystery Scene

"The sense of place is sensational, a wonderful backdrop to this complex and intriguing story."—Mystery News

"A fascinating mystery with the sensibility of a World War II movie."—Sacramento News & Review