Review: Billy Boyle

 So this is the first of 16 Billy Boyle novels by James Benn, so I can definitely say I'm fashionably late to the party. I'll just keep this short before plunging into the next one, since there are plenty more reviews to choose from. 

I'll just say that if you want to learn the history of W.W. II from an insider's point of view, while simultaneously being entertained by a murder mystery, you probably can't do better than Billy Boyle, Ike's nephew by marriage, who's not too bright but has good instincts, trained by his Boston cop father, and is trying very hard to stay alive --but not so hard that we aren't treated to Benn's specialty, military action scenes so sharp and clear that you're likely to be dodging bullets throughout. till by the end you're just glad to be alive. Highly recommend.

Billy Boyle can be found here on Amazon.

Flat on My Back and Writing in My Head:

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A little bit about a bump along the road for this first book, and the genesis for my third.

"Nevertheless, I woke up, five weeks later, a little fuzzy in the brain. I had the strange impression that I was really Sherlock Holmes and that Sherlock Holmes was actually me, and there would be hell to pay when someone found out."

Crime Reads: the Mystery Is Holmes

What’s a mystery all about? The ending? Well, of course, you say—the
denouement, the unraveling of the clues, the big reveal. If it’s too easy to guess the ending before that very moment, or if the ending doesn’t seem to mesh with the clues provided by the author you’re disappointed with it. It’s a lousy mystery, right?

Really? Ever re-read a mystery? Even though you know the solution? (If you’re like me, of course, you can re-read it a year later because you’ve forgotten the solution, but that’s another matter.) But what’s the pleasure in re-reading if the entire pleasure is in the solution dangled like a carrot before you? Tom Stoppard, the great British playwright, opines that a play which depends on keeping its secrets isn’t worth viewing twice—which he found out the hard way. 

Review: The Paragon Hotel

 This is the third Lyndsay Faye novel I've read, and by now I'm convinced she either has a research team of a hundred, or a time machine. Her ear and eye for varied time periods are that good, and yet she's able to stamp each book with her own graceful, surprising style. 

  In this one we have a gun moll on the run from the New York mafia (in the 20s) and lands in Oregon. In the only black-run and owned hotel in Portland. In a time when blacks were barely tolerated on Oregon, and the KKK was on the rise. And she finds that the inhabitants of the hotel have nearly as many secrets among them as she harbors herself, including a slinky black chanteuse who believes that if she knew all her secrets, she might just not hate her. And as the secrets unravel, we alternately love and hate and are enthralled by the characters.

   Can you tell I enjoyed the novel?

The Paragon Hotel can be found here on Amazon.