Two officers from the American troops stationed in Caserta, Italy, not far from Naples, have been found murdered. 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, the ten of hearts; the captain, the jack of hearts. The message seems to be clear: if the murderer isn’t apprehended, the higher ranks will be next. Billy is sent to Italy for the investigation, which grows increasingly sinister. But he has other things on his mind, too. His girlfriend, Diana, is on a very dangerous spy mission, and Billy doesn’t know when–or if–he’ll see her again. To make matters worse, Billy’s just learned that his baby brother, Danny, is being sent to Europe as an infantry replacement, an incredibly dangerous assignment. And all around him, he sees GIs suffering from combat fatigue preparing for another battle. As the invasion at Anzio begins, Billy needs to keep a cool head amid fear and terror as the killer calculates his next moves.

Billy Boyle, US Army detective and ex-Boston cop, faces his toughest investigation yet: infiltrating enemy lines in France as the Allies invade Normandy. It’s late May 1944. Captain Billy Boyle is court-martialed on spurious charges of black market dealings. Stripped of his officer’s rank, reduced to private, and sentenced to three months’ hard labor, Boyle is given an opportunity: he can avoid his punishment if he goes behind enemy lines to rescue a high-value Allied soldier. A secret chamber and tunnels, once used by escaping Huguenots in the 17th century, has since been taken over by the Allies. But this “safe house” on the outskirts of Chaumont turns out to be anything but. Two downed airmen, one Canadian and the other American, have been murdered. Billy is flown in as part of a three-man team on June 5, 1944, the night before the Normandy invasion. Billy must solve the mystery of who is behind the murders, then lead a group escape from France back to England, with both the Germans and a killer hot on their heels.

Lieutenant Billy Boyle could have used a rest after his last case, but when his girlfriend, Diana Seaton, a British spy, goes missing in the Vatican, where she was working undercover, he insists on being assigned to a murder investigation there so he can try to help her.

Southern France, 1944: What should be a simple assignment with a Special Operations Executive officer gets complicated quickly as Billy navigates the tensions between Resistance groups in the process of gathering information on Vichy officials and other collaborators who escaped with the retreating Germans.

Unexpectedly, the SOE officer has many enemies in the Resistance, linked to the failed Vercors uprising. Diana Seaton, Billy’s wartime lover, crosses paths with him as she and legendary SOE agent Christine Granville embark on a humanitarian mission on behalf of those killed while helping the SOE.

The search for a witness to a deadly explosion leads Billy to the legendary 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a unit made up of Nisei soldiers that became the most highly decorated unit in the history of the US Army.

With sacrifice and betrayal afoot, Billy doesn’t know who he can trust, or how close to death this case may bring him.

The thrilling story of men and women caught up in the death throes of Nazi Germany, struggling to maintain those things precious to them–life, an end to killing, and even sanity itself. Colonel Johann Faust has lost everyone he ever loved and feels he is going inexorably insane. He hears the haunting voice of his dead fianc+(r)e and the demons that roar through his mind as he perfects a plan to save Nazi Germany from defeat and insure a greater and deadlier new world war. Captain Dieter Neukirk, once a prot+(r)g+(r) of Faust’s, is more concerned with saving the lives of his remaining men than in sacrificing them in a fanatical last stand. Meanwhile, Elsa Klein, Dieter’s lover and the chief social worker at a Berlin hospital, is engaged in her own dangerous work, providing medical care and identity papers to hidden Jews in the city. American Captain Mack Mackenzie, pulled from a military hospital before his wounds are healed, is assigned to investigate reports of a secret Nazi operation. Wanting only to make it home alive, Mack finds himself in a life and death struggle with unlikely allies and a ferociously determined opponent. Americans and Germans alike are drawn to a hilltop in the remote German countryside, where they find themselves between powerful armies and forced into a terrible decision that could end one war or begin a new one.

Billy Boyle is sent to Soviet-controlled Ukraine to solve a double murder at a critical point in WWII.

It’s September 1944, and the US is poised to launch Operation Frantic, a shuttlebombing mission to be conducted by American aircraft based in Great Britain,southern Italy, and three Soviet airfields in the Ukraine. Tensions are alreadyhigh between the American and Russian allies, when two
intelligence agents–one Soviet, one American–are found dead at Poltava, one of the Ukrainian bases. Billy is brought in to investigate, and this time he’s paired, at the insistence of the Soviets, with a KGB agent who has his own political and personal agenda.

In the course of an investigation that quickly spirals out of control, Billy is aided by the Night Witches, a daring regiment of young Soviet women flying at night at very low altitudes, bombing hundreds of German installations.

It’s a turning point in the war, and allied efforts hang by a thread. Unless Billy and his KGB partner can solve the murders in an atmosphere of mutual distrust, Operation Frantic is doomed.

A double murder in a French chateau just after D-Day threatens Allied operations, and US Army detective Billy Boyle is called to investigate. July, 1944, a full month after D-Day. Billy, Kaz, and Big Mike are assigned to investigate a double murder, close to the front lines in Normandy. An American officer and a member of the French Resistance were found dead in a manor house outside the town of Trevieres. The investigation is shrouded in secrecy, due to the highly confidential nature of the American unit headquartered at the Manoir de Castilly; the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. This vague name covered a 1,000-man unit with a unique mission within the US Army: to impersonate other US Army units in order to deceive the enemy, causing them to think they were facing large formations, when in reality it was the 23rd (they called themselves The Ghost Army) creating deceptions by radio traffic, dummy inflatable vehicles, and sound effects. Not even the units adjacent to their positions were to know what they were doing. The balance of power in WWII hangs in the balance-can Billy solve the crime before the Ghost Army is exposed?

Secrets trail an American soldier from his Depression upbringing to the cold winter battles in the Ardennes Forest in the last months of World War II and through the postwar decades, as he struggles to keep his family from being torn apart while keeping the truth buried close to his heart. Clay Brock, proprietor of Jake’s Tavern, has endured terrible losses throughout his life. In 1964, he is working to build a life for his wife and son, only to see everything he’s worked for threatened by forces beyond his control. To keep his family from breaking apart, he must confront the very secret he has kept buried. For Clay, the war has never been over and his foxhole buddy Jake Burnett never far from his thoughts. At two crucial points in his life, as a young father and later as an old man at the dawn of a new and unfamiliar century, his memories draw him back until he must confront them and speak the truth. But at what cost?

A murder in wartime Switzerland reveals Swiss complicity with the Nazis and profiteering during World War II Billy and Kaz are sent to neutral Switzerland to investigate the murder of a Swiss banking official with ties to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The US and Swiss governments are about to embark on diplomatic discussions regarding the Safehaven Protocols, which are aimed at limiting the amount of war materials exported by Switzerland to the Nazis, halting the laundering of looted gold, and preventing the postwar use of Nazi wealth for war criminals. With the talks about to begin, the OSS wants their involvement in the murder cleared up, as well as to protect the participants from any threat of violence. The plans go wrong from the beginning when Billy and Kaz crash-land in France. As they make their way through occupied territory to the border, they meet Anton Lasho, a member of the Sinti ethnic group, whose family was slaughtered by the Nazis, and who is, in turn, a one-man Nazi-killing machine. They’ll need his help, because as they find once they make it across the border, Swiss banks are openly laundering gold ‘harvested’ from concentration camps, and those that are profiting will do everything they can to protect their wealth and hide their dark secrets.

Just days after the Liberation of Paris, U.S. Army detective Billy Boyle and Lieutenant Kazimierz are brought to
Saint Albans Convalescent Hospital in the English countryside. Kaz has been diagnosed with a heart condition, and
Billy is dealing with emotional exhaustion and his recent methamphetamine abuse. Meanwhile, Billy’s love, Diana
Seaton, has been taken to Ravensbruck, the Nazi concentration camp for women, and Kaz’s sister, Angelika, who he
recently learned was alive and working with the Polish Underground, has also been captured and transported to the
same camp.

This news is brought by British Major Cosgrove, whose asks Billy for help, unofficially, in solving what he thinks
was the murder of a British agent recuperating at Saint Albans. The convalescent hospital is really a secret installation
for those in the world of clandestine warfare to recover from wounds, physical and emotional. Some are allowed to
leave; others are deemed security risks and are detained there. When a second body is found, it is evident that a killer is
at work in this high-security enclave. Now Billy must carry out his covert investigation while maintaining his tenuous
recovery, shielding his actions from suspicious hospital authorities, and dodging the unknown murderer.

In his first-ever collection, the award-winning author of the Billy Boyle World War II mysteries presents an eclectic mix of new and previously published mystery stories rife with historical detail and riveting wartime storytelling.“The Horse Chestnut Tree” explores betrayal and murder during the American Revolution. In the speculative work “Glass,” an atomic supercollider and the breakdown of the time-space continuum change the lives of two cousins devoured by greed. “Vengeance Weapon,” a historical thriller about an enslaved Jewish laborer working at the Dora concentration camp, looks at how far someone will go to get revenge. And for his Billy Boyle fans, Benn delivers “Irish Tommy,” a police procedural set in 1944 Boston featuring Billy’s father and uncle.Full of terror, action, amusement, and bliss, The Refusal Camp is a must-have collection from a crime fiction veteran at the height of his career.

The tenth book in James R. Benn’s Billy Boyle WWII mystery series, normally set against a backdrop of WWII Europe, moves us to a flashback in the Pacific. 1943: Amidst the bitter, violent Solomon Islands campaign, Billy is assigned the murder investigation of a native coastwatcher, whom future president Jack Kennedy discovered on a nearby island with his head bashed in. As the body count climbs, Billy must figure out whether Jack is a cold-blooded killer, even as war rages around him. A fan-favorite series with built-in readership of historical fiction fans and military history buffs, by one of Soho Crime’s bestselling authors. Billy Boyle, the first in this series, continues to sell strongly since its 2013 reissue. Benn consistently does very successful national and local events for his book launches. Praise for the Billy Boyle series “Spirited wartime storytelling.” –The New York Times Book Review “A fast-paced saga set in a period when the fate of civilization still hangs in the balance.” –The Wall Street Journal “Consistently entertaining.” –WWII Magazine “Terrific . . . Razor sharp.” –Joseph Finder “Full of action, humor and heart.” –Louise Penny James R. Benn is the author of the Billy Boyle World War II mysteries. The debut, Billy Boyle, was named one of the top five mysteries of 2006 by Book Sense and was a Dilys Award nominee. Subsequent books have received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, and been listed as the BookageMystery of the Month. Two have been tagged as a “Killer Book” by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. A librarian for many years, Benn lives in Hadlyme, Connecticut, with his wife, Deborah Mandel. Marketing and Publicity National media campaign targeting crime & mystery reviewers; historical fiction reviewers. Inclusion in all Soho Crime Fall 2015 trade-facing advertising campaigns. Featured galley at ALA Annual and BEA 2015.

In the 14th Billy Boyle mystery, US Army detective Billy Boyle and Lieutenant Kazimierz travel into the heart of Nazi-occupied Paris on a dangerous mission: ensure a traitor to the French Resistance unwittingly carries out a high-stakes deception campaign. August, 1944: US Army detective Billy Boyle is assigned to track down a French traitor, code-named Atlantik, who is delivering classified Allied plans to German leaders in occupied Paris. The Resistance is also hot on his trail and out for blood, after Atlantik’s previous betrayals led to the death of many of their members. But the plans Atlantik carries were leaked on purpose, a ruse devised to obscure the Allied army’s real intentions to bypass Paris in a race to the German border. Now Billy and Kaz are assigned to the Resistance with orders to not let them capture the traitor: the deception campaign is too important. Playing a delicate game, the chase must be close enough to spur the traitor on and visible enough to ensure the Germans trust Atlantik. The outcome of the war may well depend on it.