Lowestoft Chronicle Editor Reviews Solemn Graves

“Trickery, duplicity, blackmail, and ‘collaboration horizontale’ are some of the themes explored in the latest, thought-provoking instalment in acclaimed American author James R. Benn’s popular wartime mystery series.

Cleverly weaving fact and fiction, Benn’s long-running series set during the Second World War continues to catapult the charismatic Irish-American hero, Captain Billy Boyle, to exciting locations, and to spotlight lesser-known Allied operations.

In Solemn Graves, his thirteenth adventure set in the summer of 1944, the Boston detective turned U.S. Army investigator assigned sensitive WWII military investigations by his ‘uncle’ General Eisenhower, journeys to a farmhouse near the town of Trévières in Normandy to investigate the murder of an American officer.

The late Major David Jerome, commanding officer of the Signals Company, Second Armored Division, was found with his throat cut in a chateau where the battalion HQ is set up. A large puddle of liquor and three broken glasses with morphine residue in one of them suggest the murder was premeditated — the killer spiked Jerome’s drink before severing his carotid arteries.

Aided by his usual buddies, Staff Sergeant ‘Big Mike’ Miecznikowski and Lieutenant Piotr ‘Kaz’ Kazimierz, military sleuth Billy Boyle attempts to get to the bottom of the puzzling crime.”

Nicholas Litchfield’s review of James R. Benn’s engrossing series entry Solemn Graves is featured today in the Lancashire Post and syndicated to 20 newspapers in the UK. You can read the review here.

Author: Editor

Founded in September 2009, Lowestoft Chronicle is a quarterly online literary magazine publishing travel-related fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction.