Customer Reviews

Desperate Ground

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

How many times did I sit and listen to my father's stories of WWII, 'The Big One,' as he called it. Some of the stories were fascinating, some were of horror, but always in his eyes I could see a hundred stories that he would never tell. These were buried deep in his spirit, happenings that could never be mentioned and would be tucked away forever in his heart and mind.

Desperate Ground could very well be one of those stories, set during the Nazi regime it tells of a time when men and women, on both sides of the line, battled not only the effects of war, but their own haunting fears, desires and convictions.
The author introduces you to characters that you are sure lived through his excellent descriptive writing of their physical appearance and their inward workings. You become engrossed in their story, their motives and their very existence. The final climax of the story reveals what each was truly made of.
The ending may well stay with you forever.

If you love World War II stories, mystery, and intrigue, this novel is for you. Well written, thought provoking, and real to life. A story you will remember for a long time to come. Truly recommended!
Shirley Johnson
Senior Reviewer/MidWest Book Review

I just finished James Benn's Desperate Ground and it is wonderful. I love to be engrossed from cover to cover and to learn historical details from mystery novels. Mr. Benn did not disappoint. The charecter development is very strong and there are the plot twists that kept me intrigued. He appears to be a great new talent and I look forward to his next in the series.

Not a big war book fan, but this book was tough to put down. Worth reading. Nice job to the Author.

Very enjoyable, highly readible novel by a new author.
Interesting and unusual setting for a detective story. Benn
makes the war as real for the reader as Gresham does
with the courtroom. Great beginning to what I hope will be
a series.

I thoroughly enjoyed the characters, especially Elsa, a strong female character who lives by her conscience, as well as the German and American soldiers, Dieter Neukirk and Billy Boyle. Even the protaganist, Erich Remke, is presented as a well-rounded, whole person. The moral dilemmas facing both the American and German characters were fascinating and underscored the complexity of right and wrong, good and evil. The book comes to a unexpected and surprising ending and left me wanting more!

I'm amazed that there haven't been any more recent reviews of this great WWII mystery. Indeed, this is an introduction to the Billy Boyle character who's been the hero of three subsequent books.However, this story takes place in the last days of WWII, after the events in the later books. Actually, Boyle is a secondery character in this book which centers on a desperate last effort by Nazi germany to prolong the war and set the U.S. and Russia. While the setting is real and several top members of the Nazi party up to and including Himmler and Hitler are portrayed here, the plot is pure fiction. Benn does set the stage for the Billy Boyle series, capsulizing his background and earlier wartime incidents. And thanks to the epilog, we're ready to hear more of Boyle's exploits during WWII and maybe, if the author chooses to go in that direction.Another of the characters in the story, who doesn't and couldn't (due to information in the epilog) appear in any of the later books, is extremely interesting and the epilog makes me hope that Benn will start a second series featuring the German character and his life after WWII. The epilog certainly appears to leave the door open for such a series.