Officer of the Court
It’s 1943 and World War II rages across the world. Major Harry Voss of the Judge Advocate General’s office, fresh from a politically awkward case in London, has been rewarded with a posting in America. And on a remote Scottish beach, two war-weary flyers discover a body. A single death in a world high-piled with corpses–a death that drags Harry Voss into another unsavory investigation. For the dead man was Lt. Armando Grassi, a JAG man whom nobody liked, including Harry Voss–and he was murdered. And Harry Voss isn’t a lawyer to let a case go unsolved just because he despised the victim.
Drawn into the investigation by Captain Woody Kneece, Voss follows Grassi’s trail from London to Greenland to Scotland and beyond, to the war’s front lines in Italy. Unravelling the tangle of corruption and deceit, Harry Voss once again proves that dogged persistence can produce at least some justice, even in an evil world.
I found this “war noir” an utterly engrossing book; I promptly went out and got the first Harry Voss mystery, The Advocate, which was just as good. Harry Voss is an ordinary man enmeshed in a world of horrors beyond comprehension–which doesn’t stop him from pursuing truth and honor as best he can. Although this series takes place in a well-realized World War II setting, Harry’s moral dilemmas are timeless.
