Billy Boyle World War II Mysteries
5 primary works • 6 total works
Book 5
American Lieutenant Billy Boyle is assigned to London by his uncle, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, to investigate the murder of a Russian security officer in the buildup to D-Day. Billy recognizes that this is a politically charged case, pitting Allies against one another, and that he must proceed with caution. The Polish contingent is incensed over evidence that implicates the Russians in the murder of hundreds of Polish prisoners in the so-called Katyn Forest Massacre, and Scotland Yard thinks this murder of a Soviet officer may be a revenge killing—perhaps perpetrated by Billy’s friend Kaz, a Polish baron in exile. But Billy doesn’t buy it. Can he find the real murderer, exonerate his friend, and prevent Allied relations from falling to pieces at this critical moment of the war?
Book 6
In his sixth investigation, Lieutenant Billy Boyle finds himself in pursuit of a serial killer with a particularly frightening agenda.
1943: US Army Lieutenant Billy Boyle, an ex-cop who serves as detective for General Ike, is sent to Caserta, Italy, to investigate the murders of two American officers stationed there. The MOs are completely different, and it seems like the officers had no connection to each other, but one frightening fact links the murders. Each body was discovered with a single playing card: the lieutenant’s with the ten of hearts; the captain’s, the jack of hearts. The message seems clear—if the murderer isn’t apprehended, the higher ranks will be next. As the invasion at Anzio begins, Billy needs to keep a cool head amidst fear and terror as the killer calculates his next moves.
Book 7
When an American monsignor with high-level political contacts is found murdered at the foot of Death's Door, one of the five entrances to Saint Peter's Basilica, Lieutenant Billy Boyle is put on the case. To solve this murder, Boyle first has to be smuggled into Rome, while avoiding the Gestapo and Allied bombs. Then he must navigate Vatican politics and personalities—some are pro-Allied, others pro-Nazi, and the rest steadfastly neutral—further complicated by the Vatican's tenuous status as neutral territory in German-occupied Rome.
But Boyle's ready to risk it all because of one simple fact: Diane Seaton, his lover and a British spy, has gone missing while undercover in the Vatican. After he discovers that she's being held in the infamous Regina Coeli prison, just a short walk from the Vatican border, Boyle must decide whether he dares attempt a rescue, even though a failed effort would alert the Germans to his mission and risk an open violation of Vatican neutrality.
Book 8
The first is a personal request from an estranged friend: Sergeant Eugene "Tree" Jackson, who grew up with Billy in Boston, is part of the 617th Tank Destroyers, the all-African American battalion poised to make history by being the US Army's first combatant African American company. But making history isn't easy, and the 617 faces racism at every turn. One of Tree's men, a gunner named Angry Smith, has been arrested for a crime he almost certainly didn't commit, and faces the gallows if the real killer isn't found. Tree knows US top brass won't care about justice in this instance, and asks Billy if he'll look into it.
But Billy can't use any of his leave to investigate, because British intelligence agent Major Cosgrove puts him on a bizarre and delicate case. A British accountant has been murdered in an English village, and he may or may not have had some connection with the US Army—Billy doesn't know, because Cosgrove won't tell him. Billy is supposed to go into the village and investigate the murder, but everything seems fishy—he's not allowed to interrogate certain key witnesses, and his friends and helpers keep being whisked away. Billy is confused about whether Cosgrove even wants him to solve the murder, and why.
The good news is the mysterious murder gives Billy an excuse to spend time in and around the village where Tree and his unit are stationed. If he's lucky, maybe he can get to the bottom of both mysteries—and save more than one innocent life.
Book 9
When an unidentified corpse washes ashore at Slapton Sands on England's southern coast, US Army Captain Billy Boyle and his partner, Lieutenant Piotr "Kaz" Kazimierz, are assigned to investigate. The Devonshire beach is the home to Operation Tiger, the top-secret rehearsal for the approaching D-Day invasion of Normandy, and the area is restricted; no one seems to know where the corpse could have come from. Luckily, Billy and Kaz have a comfortable place to lay their heads at the end of the day: Kaz's old school chum David lives close by and has agreed to host the two men during their investigation. Glad for a distraction from his duties, Billy settles into life at David's family's fancy manor, Ashcroft, and makes it his mission to get to know its intriguing cast of characters.
Just when Billy and Kaz begin to wrap up their case, they find themselves with not one soggy corpse on their hands but hundreds following a terrible tragedy during the D-Day rehearsal. To complicate things, life at Ashcroft has been getting tense: secret agendas, buried histories, and family grudges abound. Then one of the men meets a sudden demise. Was it a heart attack? Or something more sinister?
Autumn, 1943: Fifty Browning Automatic Rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition have been stolen from a US Army base in Northern Ireland. A few miles from the depot, the body of a known IRA man has been found with a bullet in the head and a pound note in his hand—the mark of an informer.
Fearing a German-sponsored IRA uprising, General Eisenhower, Billy’s uncle by marriage, sends him to recover the weapons before more damage is done. Billy searched for the missing weapons with the help of a beautiful Irish woman, an officer in British intelligence. Soldiers of the US Army, members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, as well as of local Protestant societies, and local Catholic laymen all come under suspicion. Bodies begin to accumulate, and Billy finds unexpected challenges to his Boston-Irish upbringing and his own IRA sympathies. There are rogues on both sides, he learns.