James R. Benn – författare

March, 1944. US Army lieutenant Billy Boyle, back in England after a dangerous mission in Italy, is due for a little R&R—and a promotion. But the now-Captain Boyle doesn''t get to kick back and enjoy his leisure time because two upsetting cases fall into his lap at once.

The first is a personal request from an estranged friend: Sergeant Eugene "Tree" Jackson, who grew up with Billy in Boston, is part of the 617th Tank Destroyers, the battalion poised to make history by being the US Army''s first combatant all–African American company. But making history isn''t easy, and the 617th faces racism at every turn. One of Tree''s men, a gunner named Angry Smith, has been arrested for a crime he almost certainly didn''t commit and faces the gallows if the real killer isn''t found. Tree knows US top brass won''t care about justice in this instance and asks Billy if he''ll look into it.

But Billy can''t use any of his leave to investigate because British intelligence agent Major Cosgrove puts him on a bizarre and delicate case. A British accountant has been murdered in an English village, and he may or may not have had some connection with the US Army—Billy doesn''t know because Cosgrove won''t tell him. Billy is supposed to go to the village and investigate the murder, but everything seems fishy—he''s not allowed to interrogate certain key witnesses, and his friends and helpers keep being whisked away. Billy wonders whether Cosgrove even wants him to solve the murder.

The good news is the mysterious murder gives Billy an excuse to spend time in and around the village where Tree and his unit are stationed. If he''s lucky, maybe he can get to the bottom of both mysteries and save more than one innocent life.

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 place to lay their heads at the end of the day: Kaz''s old school chum David lives close by and has agreed to host the two men during their investigation. Glad for a distraction from his duties, Billy settles into life at the family''s manor, Ashcroft, and makes it his mission to get to know its intriguing cast of characters.

Just when Billy and Kaz begin to wrap up their case, they find themselves with not one soggy corpse on their hands but hundreds following a terrible tragedy during the D-day rehearsal. To complicate things, life at Ashcroft has been getting tense: secret agendas, buried histories, and family grudges abound. Then one of the men meets a sudden demise. Was it a heart attack—or something more sinister?

The thrilling story of men and women caught up in the death throes of Nazi Germany, struggling to maintain those things precious to them—life, an end to killing, and even sanity itself. Colonel Johann Faust has lost everyone he ever loved and feels he is going inexorably insane. He hears the haunting voice of his dead fianc├®e and the demons that roar through his mind as he perfects a plan to save Nazi Germany from defeat and insure a greater and deadlier new world war. Captain Dieter Neukirk, once a prot├®g├® of Faust''s, is more concerned with saving the lives of his remaining men than in sacrificing them in a fanatical last stand. Meanwhile, Elsa Klein, Dieter''s lover and the chief social worker at a Berlin hospital, is engaged in her own dangerous work, providing medical care and identity papers to hidden Jews in the city. American Captain Mack Mackenzie, pulled from a military hospital before his wounds are healed, is assigned to investigate reports of a secret Nazi operation. Wanting only to make it home alive, Mack finds himself in a life and death struggle with unlikely allies and a ferociously determined opponent. Americans and Germans alike are drawn to a hilltop in the remote German countryside, where they find themselves between powerful armies and forced into a terrible decision that could end one war or begin a new one.