Customer Reviews

Blood Alone: A Billy Boyle World War II Mystery

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I read the first two books from this author and thoroughly enjoyed them; this one, I read 71 percent of it on my Kindle and quit, being unable or unwilling to go any further. The hero, Lt. Billy Boyle simply spends too much time in self-examination, self-doubt and self-recrimination for any action or story development to take place. In a word: Boring.

There were hints of the authors tendency to preach in the first two books, but in this one he gives his own thoughts on morality, combat, killing versus murder and any number of other such weighty subjects full reign, while we wait until the action occurs and the story moves out of compound low and into drive again.

I simply gave up. I guess that I prefer a story to page after page of character development. Dan Brown has the patent on not being able to get to the point, but I think that Mr. Benn may be running a close second with this book.

Once again, James R. Benn integrates an interesting piece of little-known history (this time, the Mafia's involvement in the Allied campaign in Sicily) into a fictional account of WWII. The mystery will hold the reader's interest right to the end.

In BLOOD ALONE, Billy Boyle faces his toughest assignment yet; coming to grips with not only who he is, but the type of man he has become after months at war. Waking in a field hospital in Sicily with a bandaged head and no idea who he is, Lt. Boyle has to piece his identity and his mission together, unsure of who to trust among those offering their help. The dusty, grinding poverty of Sicily comes alive, as Boyle journeys to the center of the island and the mountain stronghold of the head of the Sicilian mafia. Blood vendettas, gangsters on the run, Germans and secret agents with their own secrets get in his way, until Billy Boyle solves the ultimate mystery of who he is and what he was set on the island to do. The setting, and the characters, are as stimulating as the fictional mystery Benn spins out, and the actual historical events he weaves into the narrative. Superb!

James Benn's Lt. Billy Boyle, South Boston police detective turned U. S. Army staff investigator, is back once again in Blood Alone. This time it's 1943, and Billy is in a field hospital in Sicily, wounded and suffering from amnesia. He doesn't know his name, he doesn't know his mission, but he remembers he should have a helmet with netting on it. (Later on, he'll remember why.) After a short sortie into the combat zone, he returns to the field hospital, is attacked, and then witnesses a tragic, abortive paratroop drop. He remembers his name, but not much else, until he unexpectedly meets his Uncle Ike, ETO Commander Dwight Eisenhower. Vamping his way through that meeting, he then sets out to find someone who can help him to complete his mission; and he does, though not the person he was looking for.
An Italian doctor explains his amnesia to him, and tells him how fortunate he is: he's going to be able to examine his own life, and discover who he is, through the prisms of his amnesia and the war. And so he does, as he sets out to find the meaning of a cryptic note he's found in the sheath of an M3 knife, and to make sense out of the glimpses of his memory that keep appearing, and finally to complete that mysterious mission. The doctor accompanies him, through war-torn Sicily, and he, too, painfully learns his own nature.
The sense of place here is expertly crafted: villages and countryside are described in detail, and war in its terrible beauty is always superimposed on the scene. Early on, during a tank battle, yellow wildflowers are clipped by machine-gun fire, throwing bouquets onto the dead and wounded. Later, in a church, rosary beads in the praying hands of the faithful click like ammunition being fed into a machine-gun. The dust of Sicily is constant, "tiny bits of Sicily . . .staying with you no matter how hard you tried to wash it away."
Billy's primary mission, it turns out, has to do with the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, and there are several chilling scenes of rough justice, mafiusu style. That mission, though, coalesces with another one, one that Billy pieces together as he goes in search of himself. Constantly in motion, Billy uses the skills he learned in South Boston and the self-knowledge he's gaining on this journey, until at last there's an explosive denouement, which in turn sets the scene for the final act of the novel.
Early on, Billy's doctor friend quotes Mussolini: "Blood alone," said Mussolini, "moves the wheels of history." Later, Billy recalls his stint as an altar boy, and wonders if the church, too, believes that blood moves those wheels, but if that blood is the transfigured sacrificial blood from the Mass. Both combine in the novel's conclusion: Billy accomplishes both of his military missions, and then performs a sacrifice of his own--he has discovered that he's "the guy who [does] what ha[s] to be done," and he does so, because this is who he is.
Real events are expertly mixed into the narrative, and once again, Billy, having examined his life, has grown in courage and self-awareness. The themes of self-knowledge and self-interest are well-developed, the prose is vigorous, and Billy's own voice is often poetic and always eloquent. It was, as usual,
a pleasure to read his story, and I'm grateful to the author for this chance to write about it.

Billy Boyle's third installment has him in Sicily with a loss of memory which the reader should have if they read the first two mysteries. Those first two efforts established the series and the character of Billy but their mysteries were a little weak. In Blood Alone, Benn finally delivers on the mystery with his regular historical accuracy and with more interesting characters and a brisker pace. I am very interested to see how Benn uses some of the characters in future works, especially the enigmatic German officer who has popped up twice but with little revealed in his appearances. This one made the other two worthwhile.

BLOOD ALONE by James R. Benn is the third in a Billy Boyle series, Copyright 2008. I enjoyed it, I rate it as a 9 or 10 on my read again in 20 years list. It is a WW2 novel, so there is some blood and gore in it, not enough so I found it objectionable, but I handle blood and gore in print quite well. Too much and I stop reading. It is well written and well edited. There is a bit too much description of sceneriies, buildings, skies, etc. and for me. It would be a better book if it were 250 pages rather than 313. The epilogue describes how historically accurate it is, which I appreciated. I did learn some things from the book.

The library labeled it a "historical mystery" and there are at least two mystery themes. The first, and for me the most interesting, can be labeled "Who am I?" The first sentence of the jacket cover says that Billy wakes in a field hospital concussed and having amnesia, Billy is a Boston detective, and the 2nd theme is one of his detecting assignments as a first lieutenant attached to "Uncle Ike's" headquarters. Some of the things Billy does seem to me psychologically unbelieveable, even after he fully recovers from his initial, but by no means only blow on the head. The logic of the financial manipulatons in the book seemed to me illogical, or perhaps my knowledge of Cosa Nostra and banking operations is faulty.

The problem with this outing is that the protagonist Lt. Boyle starts out with amnesia from a head wound. He doesn't remember what his mission to Sicily is and as a result neither did I. The amnesia slowly lifts but I was at a loss to understand what was going on for the first 60% of the book. The ending is OK and more in keeping with the rest of the series. It was entertaining but not exceptional. I'll read the rest of the series because I like novels based on real WWII events and the author does a workmanlike job.

This series is very special. My dad fought in North Africa in WW 2 so some of the scenes were right out of my imagination. The story set in Ireland reveals that the British/Irish conflict was deadly and painful even during the war. Can't wait until the next book. Well done!

An entertaining good read that throws some light on lesser known operations and battles of WWII. The action is fast and the real facts are not laid on too heavily.

These Billy Boyle mysteries are a great read. The author incorporates factual WW II history right into each story. It makes for a really enjoyable and educational foray into the recent past.