When Hell Struck Twelve

July 1, 2019
A World War II supersleuth slips into Paris to find a murderous French traitor. August, 1944. Though Gen. Patton's troops are driving the Nazis out of France, Germany is responding with desperate violence. In the thick of combat in northern France, Capt. Billy Boyle (Solemn Graves, 2018, etc.) wants to get back to Paris, still occupied by the Nazis. News of the recent Warsaw Ghetto Uprising has his sidekick, Lt. Piotr "Kaz" Kazimierz, worried sick about his family back in Poland. The pair learn of a Resistance leader known only by the code name "Atlantik" who's been betraying his French comrades to the Germans. Deducing his identity and finding him falls to Boyle, who narrates in a forceful first-person. The murder of Lt. Sean McKuras, an American who worked closely with the Resistance, gives the search even more urgency and pathos for the American duo. After the area surrounding the murder scene is secured, suspicion falls on Lucien Fassier, known as the Falcon, who's disappeared. Scenes of battle alternate with episodes in the hunt and cameo appearances by real wartime personages like Ernest Hemingway and Gen. Eisenhower, whom Boyle calls Uncle Ike because of his years of working in the general's office. At length the trail takes them to Paris, where their pursuit hits a pothole with the murder of Fassier. If he's not the traitor, then who is? As usual, Benn packs this installment with historical detail and writes with authority and punch.

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Starred review from July 8, 2019
In August 1944, Capt. Billy Boyle is working for General Eisenhower in the Office of Special Investigations of the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, in Benn’s stellar 14th WWII mystery (after 2018’s Solemn Graves). As the Allies close in on the enemy forces trying to escape the Falaise Gap, Billy’s job is to interrogate prisoners to learn about German plans to defend Paris. Boyle soon figures out that his assignment is a ruse to make it appear that the Allies are desperate for information about Paris, a clear signal that an attack on that city is in the works, when Eisenhower actually intends to bypass Paris. Meanwhile, one of the captured soldiers they question reveals that a French partisan group’s leader, code-named Atlantik, has been betraying members of the Resistance. A briefing is planned that’s intended to flush out Atlantik, complete with a phony mortar attack, but it goes wrong, and two men, including an American officer, are murdered amid the chaos. The author makes the most of the tense and dramatic backdrop to this high-stakes whodunit. Benn has surpassed himself with this installment.

August 23, 2019

It's August 1944. Working for General Eisenhower under the command of Colonel Harding, Captain Billy Boyle is involved in organizing a phony strategy session with various factions of the French Resistance. The ruse is twofold--flush out a French traitor and deceive the Nazis regarding Allied movements toward Paris. During the planned confusion of a fake mortar attack, the map containing the bogus plan is stolen. Boyle and his Polish companion, Kaz, are sent to chase down the double agent, but discovering the mutilated body of their suspect, they realize they've been after the wrong man. Various clues and chance encounters send them into the streets of Paris in pursuit of the spy-turned-murderer. VERDICT The action starts on the first page and doesn't slow down, unfortunately sacrificing backstory in the process. Readers of World War II fiction and those who enjoy plot-driven stories will find much to love; however, Benn assumes a level of war knowledge that might leave some readers frustrated and confused. Purchase where previous volumes circulate, but new readers should start with the first in the series, Billy Boyle.--Vicki Briner, Broomfield, CO

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2019
As the Allied forces move farther inland from the beaches of Normandy, the problem of Paris looms large. Invade the capital, risking the destruction of one of the world's great cities, or skirt it, forcing long-suffering Parisians to await liberation still longer? That question drives the fourteenth installment in Benn's long-running WWII series starring Captain Billy Boyle, special investigator assigned to General Eisenhower's staff. As Boyle and his friend and colleague, Polish baron Kaz Kazimierz, have become involved with the French Resistance (first in Blue Madonna, 2016, and then in Solemn Graves, 2018), this consistently strong series has jumped to another level, with this volume clearly the hands-down best so far. Using historical information about the debate over Paris, Benn concocts a fictional plan designed by Eisenhower to camouflage the Allies' decision to bypass the City of Light in the march to Germany. But when the plan, intentionally put into the hands of a traitor to the Resistance, changes, it becomes imperative that Billy and Kaz find the traitor before he can reach the gestapo in Paris. What follows is a grandly suspenseful, old-school war story, in which Billy, fueled by German "Panzer Pills" (methamphetamines), races across darkened Paris streets, intent on helping to save the city from destruction. Along the way, Billy must contend not only with the Nazis but also with various Resistance groups warring among themselves. Benn's portrayal of the gallifmaufry of competing Resistance groups, whose bullets, Billy learns, kill you just as dead as the Germans' more powerful weaponry, adds a fascinating dimension to this exciting story of the sometimes-deadly chaos that accompanied the liberation of Paris.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)