James R Benn

"What’s a twenty-two-year-old Irish American cop who’s never been out of Massachusetts before doing at Beardsley Hall, an English country house, having lunch with King Haakon of Norway? Billy Boyle himself wonders. Back home in Southie, he’d barely made detective when war was declared. Unwilling to fight—and perhaps die—for England, he was relieved when his mother wangled a job for him on the staff of a general married to her distant cousin....

"Billy Boyle, US Army detective and ex-Boston cop, faces his toughest investigation yet: infiltrating enemy lines in France as the Allies invade Normandy. It's late May 1944. Captain Billy Boyle is court-martialed on spurious charges of black market dealings. Stripped of his officer's rank, reduced to private, and sentenced to three months' hard labor, Boyle is given an opportunity: he can avoid his punishment if he goes behind enemy lines to rescue...

"It's September 1944, and the US is poised to launch Operation Frantic, a shuttle bombing mission to be conducted by American aircraft based in Great Britain, southern Italy, and three Soviet airfields in the Ukraine. Tensions are already high between theAmerican and Russian allies when two intelligence agents-one Soviet, one American-are found dead at Poltava, one of the Ukrainian bases. Billy is brought in to investigate, and this time he's paired,...

"Following their mission in the Soviet Union, Billy, Kaz, and Big Mike are sent to southern France for what should be a simple assignment: to serve as security for Royal Navy Commander Gordon Stewart, head of the Special Operations Executive's Section F in Algiers. Stewart's mission is to work with Resistance leaders in liberated areas to gather information that will help track down Vichy officials and other traitors who escaped with the retreating...

"Lieutenant Billy Boyle could have used a rest after his last case, but when his girlfriend, Diana Seaton, a British spy, goes missing in the Vatican, where she was working undercover, he insists on being assigned to a murder investigation there so he can try to help her. An American monsignor is found murdered at the foot of Death's Door, one of the five entrances to Saint Peter's Basilica. Wild Bill Donovan, head of the OSS, wants the killing investigated....

In his time investigating crimes for both the Boston cops and General Ike's European forces, Lieutenant Billy Boyle hasn't encountered a serial killer. But now it looks like he may--a serial killer with a particularly frightening agenda.

On Desperate Ground is the story of men and women caught up in the death throes of Nazi Germany, struggling to maintain those things precious to them-life, an end to killing, and even sanity itself. Colonel Johann Faust has lost everyone he ever loved and feels he is going inexorably insane. He hears the haunting voice of his dead fiancée and the demons that roar through his mind as he perfects a plan to save Nazi Germany from defeat and insure a...

"Norfolk, England, November 1944: After a series of dangerous missions in the South of France, US Army Captain Billy Boyle is finally on leave, and is settling into a peaceful rest at the country estate of Sir Richard Seaton, the father of Billy's British lover, Diana. Seaton Manor is a comfortable haven, and Billy is eager to spend a few precious days in Diana's company pretending the war is far away. Unfortunately, Billy's leave is cut short when...