Blood Alone
Billy Boyle, the one-time Boston police officer busily helping his Uncle Ike in intelligence work, is at it again in the author’s third novel on World War II. Boyle had been asked by his uncle, none other than General Dwight D. Eisenhower, to look into employing the Mafia to assist Allied forces in the 1943 invasion of Sicily. Boyle wakes up in an Army hospital on the island suffering from amnesia, with a silk handkerchief in his pocket. This handkerchief will prove to be an aid in his recovering his memory but, in the meantime, he goes into battle with hard-bitten American paratroopers and meets up with a shady sergeant in supply services. Adventures abound as the ever-resourceful Boyle’s memory returns and he realizes the handkerchief is his letter of introduction to the head of the Sicilian Mafia. Joining with an Italian army doctor and members of an Allied intelligence team, Boyle moves through enemy lines to join in on the delicate negotiations with the Sicilian gangsters.
James Benn is never dull, and Billy Boyle is always fun. Some may say that World War II deals between “Lucky” Luciano and the US government are too inconceivable even for fiction, but they did in fact occur. Join up with Billy Boyle and fight Mafia greed and German and Italian soldiers while helping his soft-spoken uncle.
