A Bitter Wind (A Billy Boyle WWII Mystery)
This is the twentieth installment of James R. Benn’s fictional yet factual Billy Boyle World War II Mystery series. This one immerses U.S. Army Captain Billy Boyle in top-secret electronic warfare, then involving radios, radar, signal jamming, secret scientific breakthroughs, and cutting-edge hardware, plus human intelligence.
On Christmas Day, 1944, Billy celebrates a brief reunion with his English girlfriend, Captain Diana Seaton, by walking along the White Cliffs of Dover. In a top-notch cliffhanger opening, Billy and Diana manage to recover a body dumped over the edge, and this exciting mystery/military thriller starts with a bang. Likeable, superheroic Billy, a former Boston cop, is attached to SCEAF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) under General Eisenhower. Diana is deep in Royal Air Force hush-hush radio work. Their previous war adventures have filled many earlier installments of this swashbuckling series. When the body turns out to be a murdered RAF officer, Billy swings into action. Soon there’s another victim, and it’s clear that dark deeds—possibly including espionage—are roiling the U.S.-British intelligence base where Diana works. Billy’s crusade to solve the mystery carries him to “a strange and faraway land shrouded in secrets,” or what is now, approximately, Serbia, then being hotly fought over by various factions. Pages fly by at a breathless pace as the novel—and Billy—race from close call to close call, with a plentiful body count and well-integrated World War II history along the way.
Characters recur from earlier installments of Benn’s saga, which is skillfully narrated, featuring moments of genuine heroism and pathos, excellent descriptive passages, bloody battle scenes, and unrelenting suspense. Highly recommended for World War II buffs and aficionados of historical thrillers, spy novels, and military fiction.
