From the Shadows

April 1, 2022

Tasked with serving as security for Royal Navy Commander Gordon Stewart, head of the Special Operations Executive's Section F in Algiers, Capt. Billy Boyle and buddies Kaz and Big Mike cooperate with Resistance leaders to flush out Vichy officials and other collaborators as the Germans sound the retreat. Stewart needs all the protection he can get; he's created enemies in both the SOE and the Resistance. From former librarian Benn, an IMPAC Dublin long-listee and Barry/Macavity finalist.

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July 4, 2022
At the start of Benn’s thrilling 17th WWII mystery featuring U.S. Army investigator Billy Boyle (after 2021’s Road of Bones), Billy is dispatched to German-occupied Crete in October 1944 to locate Capt. Richard “Dickie” Thorne, who’s been helping the Greek partisans there but has been out of radio contact. The head of a Special Operations Executive team in Algiers wants Dickie to serve as his security officer for his trip to southern France to meet Resistance groups, collect information on turncoats who betrayed their comrades to the enemy, and assist the French government in identifying those who escaped with retreating Germans. But blood feuds, subterfuge, and long-held vendettas shadow the SOE mission, beginning with the death of Billy’s guide in Crete. Subsequent murder attempts directed at SOE operatives put Boyle and his friends, including his lover, Lady Diana Seaton, who’s engaged in a humanitarian mission, in the firing line as they race to thwart an assassination. This richly detailed wartime adventure spotlights acts of barbarity and heroism, bungled leadership, and valiant last charges. Benn reliably entertains. Agent: Paula Munier, Talcott Notch Literary Services.

July 1, 2022
A righteous American soldier helps British intel in its probe of the French Resistance. Capt. Billy Boyle's brief respite in Cairo is cut short when he's reassigned to a special, top-secret mission in October 1944. What should be a simple Mediterranean journey to the new HQ in France becomes a dangerous passage with the discovery that the Germans are in pursuit. Billy's guide, Erasmos Papadakis, is accused by his fellow Greek resistance fighters of working with the Germans. When Erasmos is shot dead from afar, it's a reminder of the constant dangers of war and the challenge of distinguishing allies from enemies. Billy's new assignment, sorting out the true allegiances in the French Resistance, means a reunion with his longtime sidekick, Polish baron Piotr "Kaz" Kazimierz, and his British ladylove, Diana Seaton, who's now working with Christine Granville, a legend among the British intelligence arm known as the Special Operations Executive. Although the books in Benn's long-running series have evolved from straightforward whodunits with a wartime background into ambitious, atmospheric thrillers, broader both in scope and literary finesse, two mysteries propel the action here: the murder of gregarious Oxford-educated SOE officer Dickie Thorne and the disappearance of 2 million francs last seen in the custody of deceased half-German half-French liaison Albert Schenck, a Gestapo officer. Can Schenck's widow, Marie, shed any light on this missing fortune? A lengthy historical note traces the real-life roots of some of the characters. A solid mystery tucked into a colorful thriller dramatizing war's complexity and devastation.

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Starred review from August 1, 2022
Through 17 installments in his celebrated series of WWII thrillers, which track the peregrinations of Billy Boyle, special investigator with General Eisenhower's staff, across various theaters of war, Benn has made superb use of little-known episodes of military history. This time he ups the ante, combining several of those episodes--and a host of real-life characters--into a story that displays both the bureaucratic bungling of the Allied armies and the astounding heroism of individual soldiers and resistance fighters. The key incident here is the 1944 Vercors Uprising, in which French Resistance fighters, assuming support was coming from the Allies, confronted Nazi forces in the French Alps and, when the support didn't materialize, were summarily slaughtered. Boyle is thrown into the aftermath when members of the British Special Operations Executive are assassinated, apparently as part of reprisals organized by the Resistance. Meanwhile, Boyle also lands in the middle of another of the war's ugly backstories, involving the callous treatment of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up of Nisei soldiers, in the Vosges mountains of France. Benn intertwines these two plots, tinkering just a bit with the real-life timeline, into a shocking tale of wartime perfidy. The personal stories of Boyle and his cohorts, including SOE agent Diana Seaton and Polish lieutenant Kaz Kazimierz, are less prominent this time, but that's fine, given that the historical material is so utterly compelling.

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