Solemn Graves

July 15, 2018
Brash Billy Boyle faces special challenges as he tries to implement a low-profile probe.A month after D-Day, U.S. Army detective Billy Boyle and Staff Sgt. "Big Mike" Miecznikowski arrive in Normandy, its landscape dotted with dead cows, to investigate the murder of Maj. David Jerome, commanding officer of the Signals Company, 2nd Armored Division, who's been found with his throat slashed at the 30th Division battalion headquarters, a scene marked by a lot of blood, a lot of booze, and the smell of morphine, all seemingly significant clues. Yvonne, the haunted, fragile beauty who discovered the body, is too frightened to answer questions. There are disturbing rumors that Yvonne is a German spy, and the rest of the locals warrant nearly as much suspicion. Billy is just getting a handle on the place and starting his investigation when they encounter another corpse, this one wearing a German uniform and shot through the eye. The arrival of Kaz, Billy's customary sidekick (The Devouring, 2017, etc.), helps the sleuths gain traction as they begin by seeking Jerome's own division headquarters. Though they fill in several minor details about Jerome's movements, their probing mostly confirms that all roads of inquiry lead back to Yvonne. But as the trio digs deeper and deals with more victims, they begin to question the allegiances of everyone in the small community.Benn's plotting and his first-person narrative both acquire more gravitas as they continue to chart the course of World War II. His latest outing is a complex tale that hinges on a particular moment in world history he captures incisively.

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Starred review from July 23, 2018
Set in the summer of 1944, Benn’s exceptional 13th mystery featuring U.S. Army investigator Billy Boyle (after 2017’s The Devouring) takes Boyle to Normandy, where Maj. David Jerome, the commanding officer of a signals company, has been found with his throat slit in a villa. A glass near the body with morphine residue at the bottom indicates to Boyle that the murderer spiked the major’s drink to lessen his resistance. Oddly, troops from Jerome’s company who were at the crime scene when Boyle arrived don’t hang around to be questioned—and Boyle must also account for the presence of 20-year-old Yvonne Virot, a mute woman living in the villa, whose clothing is drenched with blood. Complicating Billy’s task are a morally suspect Resistance leader and the villa’s owner, whose code name in the Resistance—Corday—evokes the excesses of the French Revolution. Details about ways to deceive the enemy about Allied army strength lend verisimilitude. Benn has never been better at integrating a whodunit plot line with a realistic depiction of life on or near the battlefield.

July 1, 2018
In our review of Benn's The Devouring (2017), we expressed the wish that in his next adventure, Billy Boyle, special investigator assigned to General Eisenhower's staff, would return to Normandy and the post-D-Day battlefield. That wish is granted here, as Captain Boyle, accompanied by his usual cohorts, Big Mike and Kaz?the former an army sergeant, the latter a Polish baron?are tasked with determining who murdered a staff major in a French village near the front. Billy and crew quickly discern why the top brass are so worried about one homicide in the middle of an invasion: a breakout attack is planned at St. Lo, and, to disguise the plan from the Germans, a Ghost Army employing inflatable tanks and sound effects is at work in the countryside, camouflaging the actual troop movements. Does the murder mean the Germans are onto the scheme? Once again, Benn has unearthed a fascinating piece of relatively unknown WWII history and built an engaging mystery around it, combining the Ghost Army with a chilling view of the ugly reparations exacted by Resistance fighters on assumed Nazi collaborators. Liberation, Billy is shocked to learn, has its own dark side.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)