I was recently up in Madison at R.J. Julia’s, one of the few remaining independent bookstores in the state, for a launch party for the fourth Billy Boyle mystery by Connecticut author and master blender of fact and fiction James R. Benn. Worth the ride ... a remarkable place.
Evil for Evil finds Billy in late 1943 in Northern Ireland investigating the theft of 50 automatic rifles and 200,000 rounds of ammunition from a U.S. Army depot. The body of a slain IRA man is found a few miles away and Billy's military superiors fear the stolen weapons will be used in a Nazi engineered IRA uprising.
Billy, a former Boston cop and a nephew by marriage to General Eisenhower, on whose staff he serves, is part of a proud Irish-American family supportive of the Republican cause.
As Publishers Weekly explains, “Billy struggles to remain impartial as he investigates the various factions on both sides of the Catholic-Protestant divide. Benn offers no easy answers in this rich mix of Irish history and wartime intrigue.”
Booklist says "Benn continues to create fascinating behind-the-scenes mysteries from little-known facets of World War II history … A solid series that keeps getting better."
Benn will be joining us at the Westport Library on Sunday, October 25 at 2:00 pm along with Peter Lovesey, the award-winning author of over thirty-five crime novels, including the contemporary Peter Diamond series and the Victorian era Sergeant Cribb mysteries. They will be interviewed by Joe Meyers of the Connecticut Post.
Looking for tales of the war on the home front or World War II mysteries from a woman’s POV? Kathryn Miller Haines puts a delightful spin on Rosie the Riveter with her character, Rosie Winter, a desperate out of work actress who grabs a part-time job at a steamy, lowbrow detective agency. Her acting skills come in handy when her boss turns up dead and Rosie carries on alone.
In the third book of the series, the recently released Winter in June, it is 1943, and Rosie joins the USO in the hope of an opportunity to search for Jack, her missing soldier boyfriend, last scene somewhere in the Solomon Islands. Before the USO ship pulls out of San Francisco, the body of a former WAC is found floating in the water and the mystery surrounding the woman’s death follows Rosie all the way to her destination where it is compounded by a second murder, perhaps related to Jack’s disappearance.
Publishers Weekly finds Winter in June "Full of evocative period detail … this entry, for all its humorous and lighthearted moments, builds to a dramatic and sobering conclusion.”
Time to trot out some old Glenn Miller recordings and get into a few good reads!
