Billy Boyle World War II mysteries

"What’s a twenty-two-year-old Irish American cop who’s never been out of Massachusetts before doing at Beardsley Hall, an English country house, having lunch with King Haakon of Norway? Billy Boyle himself wonders. Back home in Southie, he’d barely made detective when war was declared. Unwilling to fight—and perhaps die—for England, he was relieved when his mother wangled a job for him on the staff of a general married to her distant cousin....

Billy Boyle awakens in a field hospital in Sicily with amnesia. In his pocket is a yellow silk handkerchief embroidered with the initial L. Gradually he remembers: he has been sent ashore in advance of the troops with this token from Lucky Luciano to contact the head of the Sicilian Mafia. But he must also thwart a murderous band of counterfeiters of Army scrip led by Vito Genovese.

In December 1943, Billy's orders send him to London to look into a Soviet officer's shooting murder, which may be retaliation for the execution of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest that's been blamed on the Germans but probably was committed by Russians. Since the Soviets are allies, the investigation requires the utmost sensitivity.

"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. An American monsignor is found murdered at the foot of Death's Door, one of the five entrances to Saint Peter's Basilica. Wild Bill Donovan, head of the OSS, wants the killing investigated....

"When an unidentified corpse washes ashore at Slapton Sands on England's southern coast, US Army Captain Billy Boyle and his partner, Lieutenant Piotr 'Kaz' Kazimierz, are assigned to investigate. The Devonshire beach is the home to Operation Tiger, the top-secret rehearsal for the approaching D-Day invasion of Normandy, and the area is restricted; no one seems to know where the corpse could have come from. Luckily, Billy and Kaz have a comfortable...

"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 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,...

"Just days after the Liberation of Paris, Billy and Kaz 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...

"Following their mission in the Soviet Union, Billy, Kaz, and Big Mike are sent to southern France for what should be a simple assignment: to serve as security for Royal Navy Commander Gordon Stewart, head of the Special Operations Executive's Section F in Algiers. Stewart's mission is to work with Resistance leaders in liberated areas to gather information that will help track down Vichy officials and other traitors who escaped with the retreating...