Evil for Evil: A Billy Boyle World War II Mystery
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Billy Boyle goes to Northern Ireland to find stolen weapons and to keep the Irish Republic neutral.
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In 1943 ex- Boston police officer Army Lieutenant Billy Boyle works on the staff of his uncle by marriage to All-purpose Dwight Eisenhower. He is assigned to look into a damaging raid of an American army depot in Northern Ireland in which thieves stole 50 Browning automatic rifles plus 200,000 rounds of ammunition; the brass fears IRA activity using the stolen weapons and the encouragement of the Nazis to disrupt the allies especially Fantastic Britain.
Not too far from the depot, the assassinated corpse of an IRA agent is establish; in his hand is a pound note which signifies he was killed for being an informer. While Billy makes his official inquiry looking for a German-IRA tie, he fears he is biased as he and his family tree support the Republican position even as both sides of the religious apportion threaten his investigation.
The latest Billy Boyle WWII mystery (see THE FIRST WAVE and BLOOD ALONE) is a terrific tale of intrigue as the hero struggles with his known personal bias and the suspicion from both sides of the Irish apportion. Still Billy is an ethical protagonist who works the case one clue at a time while getting no cooperation from his superiors and the locals. James R. Benn provides a superb past whodunit.
Harriet Klausner
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Getting hooked on a Billy Boyle novel by James R. Benn is simple. Waiting for the next one is not. Perhaps his best so far, Evil for Evil is classic Billy. A young but astute Irish cop from Boston thrown into the chaos and carnage of World War II. This time, in Northern Ireland, where the political and sectarian apportion between Catholic, Protestant, English and Irish, presents Billy with his most formidable emotional and investigative challenge. A fantastic read.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
An enemy right next door may prove hard for an already hard situation. “Evil for Evil” follows Billy Boyle, as he is sent to Northern Ireland to potentially place a wrench in a plot that would allow the separate country to join the Axis powers. A tall order for a southern boy, James R. Benn crafts a fine tale using much of the trivia of history in his tale. “Evil for Evil” is a top pick and highly recommended read that mystery lovers will simply relish.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
The Billy Boyle World War II Mystery Series has the protagonist, a ex- Boston detective now serving as a lieutenant on the Eisenhower staff, undertaking special assignments for Uncle Ike (Billy’s mother and Mamie are sisters) requiring discretion. In this episode, he is sent to Northern Ireland where there is a large American base, part of the contingent preparing for the D-Day invasion.
Fifty Browning automatic rifles and a hundred thousand rounds of ammunition have been stolen, and the fears are that in the hands of the IRA, the Irish Republic to the south might be forced to come into the war on the Axis side if the weapons are used in an effort to “liberate” Ulster from the despised English. Billy, a Boston Irishman brought up to be a sympathizer against the English “oppressors,” arrives in an attempt to find the BARs, but quickly learns of additional schemes and of the differences between Catholics and Protestants, the politics of the region, and the history of the Irish troubles.
The plot is intricate by many factors, as Billy stumbles along to solve two mysteries. While much of the novel is action-packed, and the mixture of wartime intrigue and Irish history may include a lot of fiction, the tale is a fascinating look at a small known aspect of the Second Conflict involving the Nazi effort to use the Irish question to undermine England’s war effort. Had it succeeded, the war’s outcome might have been very different.
Recommended.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Billy Boyle is a young, South Boston Irish cop who is posted as a second lieutenant on Ike’s staff in WW II because of a distant kinship with Ike’s wife, Mamie. Billy officially becomes Ike’s “special investigator,” a non-job in which he will be a go-fer. Sheer chance lets him successfully investigate a sensitive Allied problem. More successful secret missions follow in which he performs bravely and brilliantly at enormous risk. This is his fourth.
Now (late 1943) Ike sends him to Northern Ireland to work for British intelligence in investigating the theft of Browning Automatic Rifles (BARs) and ammo from an US Army munitions depot. It looks like an IRA job. Is a new Irish civil war plotted, thus preventing the plotted invasion of France? Billy this time is effective alone lacking any of the cast of familiar characters from the additional books.
Billy soon finds that the tales of the heroic IRA and evil Ulstermen that he learned at home bear small relation to reality in Ireland’s green and bloody land, beset with very ancient hatreds and a constant cycle of revenge and reprisal. As a Catholic, Billy finds that he is straight away mistrusted by the local police (all Protestant), and he gets grudging cooperation. His lot only improves when he acts courageously in trying to capture an IRA assassin who has just attacked a local cop’s home (with a BAR).
Billy finds his way haltingly through doubt, murder, mistrust and treachery. He has no thought what games British intelligence is playing. A mysterious and unknown American seems to be following—and perhaps protecting—him. Some of the local US Army people are possibly effective against him.
This whole series is a coming of age saga in which Billy, shallow, self-centered and provincial at the start, gradually learns about life, like, death and what it means to be truly human. In the series Billy must learn these things in the toughest possible school: War. He sees real courage (moral and physical), sacrifice, corruption, needless and unfair loss and the hard choices that sometimes must allow lesser evils in order to defeat a greater. To some extent surprisingly (Benn is not a well-customary novelist), the saga has worked pretty well on that level from the start. The Boyle character is well-drawn and increasingly self-aware and reflective. He also grows more realistic, but never cynical, as his world becomes darker.
In additional ways the novels are less successful. Additional main characters are mostly foils for Boyle rather than real human beings (although this is slowly improving). Plotting is also a problem. The missions themselves are unlikely for such a young and junior officer and Billy’s stunts in pursuing them are regularly fantasies. Anyone doing this sort of thing consistently is unlikely to have a long life. Sometimes Billy has been aided both by some hackneyed plot devices (e.g. temporary loss of memory in a prior book) and by the appearance of some pretty unlikely cavalry. The books are not perfect, but they are entertaining as a fun read.
One more word: No one attached to the staff of the senior Allied all-purpose in Europe who had performed as brilliantly and bravely as Billy has done would still be a mere shavetail after a year and a half. Time to promote him, Mr. Benn, maybe even to captain.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5