The White Ghost

July 20, 2015
Set in 1943, Benn’s intriguing 10th Billy Boyle whodunit (after 2014’s The Rest Is Silence) takes the former Boston cop, now serving as a special investigator on General Eisenhower’s staff, from Morocco to the Pacific, to handle a highly sensitive inquiry involving Jack Kennedy, a U.S. Navy lieutenant who recently survived the sinking of his PT boat. Jack is under suspicion for murder after finding the body of Daniel Tamana, a Guadalcanal native who served as a scout, with his head bashed in on Tulagi, another island in the Solomons. Since Billy has an unpleasant history with the Kennedy family, he has to be extremely careful in assessing the evidence. If Billy incriminates Jack, some people will think he’s taking personal revenge. Tamana proves to be just the killer’s first victim, but the motive for the crimes remains elusive. Benn does a good job of capturing life under the constant threat of Japanese attack—and depicting the Kennedys as flawed human beings.

When young Jack Kennedy stands accused of murder, it falls to Billy Boyle to exonerate the future president of the U.S. and find the real killer. August 1943. Lt. Boyle, who tells his story in a characteristically snappy first person, is summoned to Casablanca on a secret directive from the War Department. Who should be waiting for him but "Joe Goddamn Kennedy"? Young Jack Kennedy has lost PT-109 and stands accused of killing Australian serviceman Daniel Tamana. All of this happened in the Solomon Islands, where Billy and sidekick Kaz make tracks pronto. They find Jack Kennedy in the hospital, noticeably thinner but mostly the same handsome charmer he's always been and adamant that he didn't kill Tamana. Because of native burial traditions, Billy and Kaz are able to examine Tamana's preserved head and locate the fatal wound. It's not long before they're skirmishing with a Japanese patrol. Though Kennedy doesn't seem to be the prime suspect after all, the inveterate investigator in Billy kicks in when he learns of another victim, Sam Chang, who may have been connected to Tamana. A promise to Chang's beautiful sister seals the deal. The solution to the mystery involves Chinese gangs, chicanery regarding the sinking of PT-109, and many questions about Tamana's secretive nature. Billy's 10th case (The Rest Is Silence, 2014, etc.) features a delicious premise, a full-bodied portrait of young JFK, and a beautifully textured look at military life in World War II. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2015

The Battle for the Solomon Islands in 1943 was one of the hardest fought campaigns of the war in the Pacific. Lt. Billy Boyle travels to Tulagi at the behest of the Kennedy family to investigate whether or not PT skipper Jack Kennedy is guilty of murder. Even if you are not a mystery fan, the historical details are stellar in Benn's tenth series outing (following The Rest Is Silence).

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2015
The tenth Billy Boyle novel, starring the special investigator assigned to Allied Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower's staff, moves back in time to explain what Boyle was up to between the invasion of Sicily in July 1943 (Blood Alone, 2008) and his case in Northern Ireland in November of that year (Evil for Evil, 2009). Turns out the peripatetic Billy was in the Solomon Islands, investigating the murder of one of the navy's Coastwatchers, native intelligence agents who observed Japanese troop movements from Axis-held islands. So why is Boyle, Eisenhower's man in the European theater, dispatched to the South Pacific? It all goes back to Boyle's home turf in Boston and a family called Kennedy. Turns out the PT skipper who found the murdered man's body and has become a person of interest happens to be Jack Kennedy, with whom Billy had issues in Beantown. Benn makes the most of the Kennedy angleportraying Jack as a headstrong young man with a sense of entitlement slowly slouching toward maturitybut what really gives this novel its punch are the battle scenes on the Solomons. The tension between a murder investigation and wartime action has always been at the heart of this seriesHow can one killing matter in a world where hundreds die every day?but here it is ramped up to a new level, in terms of both suspense and character development. Working with recently declassified documents about the Solomon Islands Campaign, Benn spins an absolute corker of a war story. The best of an always satisfying series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)