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A review by usbsticky
The Red Horse by James R. Benn
4.0
#14 in the Billy Boyle series. You should really read the series in order as they follow on eachother. Billy Boyle is a Boston detective in real life. In the WW2 US army he is a captain at SHAEF due to being a distant relation of Ike. He kind of fills a special detective/operative role together with Sgt. Mike (a Chicago cop) and Baron Lt. Kaz (a Polish soldier in the British army). They investigate unusual crimes or espionage cases. In the last book they were sent to France after D-Day to try and mislead the Germans into defending Paris and solve a murder at the same time.
Spoilers ahead:
In this book Boyle has been sent to St. Albans, a rest home/hospital for mentally stressed (basically PTSD) cases for high security clearance members of the armed forces. During his last assignment Boyle had been highly stressed because his loved one (Diane, SOE operative) was taken by the Germans and he had been taking meth (German Pervitin) pills to try and stay awake for days while trying to find and kill a French double agent during the last days of the liberation of Paris.
At St. Albans, first one, then other patients are being killed, apparently not by Germans but by someone else at St. Albans and Billy tries to find the killer. He discovers a highly secretive and very controversial operation of the SOE. This operation is based on actual history as are some of the characters in this book.
The writing is easy to read and follow but this is not an edge of the seat thriller. I read it slowly over several days as I followed Billy Boyle doing his due diligence following the clues and questioning witnesses. There is a lot of history in this book. It seems there was an operation to sow discord in the Nazi ranks by sending out false flags. There was also a bit on V2 rockets, which I read up on later. I would have loved it if the book had more on the V2 as that was an important part at the end of the war.
I would recommend this book and series to anyone interesting in WW2 and crime books with a WW2 setting. Now waiting to read book #15 which is already out.
Spoilers ahead:
In this book Boyle has been sent to St. Albans, a rest home/hospital for mentally stressed (basically PTSD) cases for high security clearance members of the armed forces. During his last assignment Boyle had been highly stressed because his loved one (Diane, SOE operative) was taken by the Germans and he had been taking meth (German Pervitin) pills to try and stay awake for days while trying to find and kill a French double agent during the last days of the liberation of Paris.
At St. Albans, first one, then other patients are being killed, apparently not by Germans but by someone else at St. Albans and Billy tries to find the killer. He discovers a highly secretive and very controversial operation of the SOE. This operation is based on actual history as are some of the characters in this book.
The writing is easy to read and follow but this is not an edge of the seat thriller. I read it slowly over several days as I followed Billy Boyle doing his due diligence following the clues and questioning witnesses. There is a lot of history in this book. It seems there was an operation to sow discord in the Nazi ranks by sending out false flags. There was also a bit on V2 rockets, which I read up on later. I would have loved it if the book had more on the V2 as that was an important part at the end of the war.
I would recommend this book and series to anyone interesting in WW2 and crime books with a WW2 setting. Now waiting to read book #15 which is already out.