Road of Bones
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Billy Boyle is sent to the heart of the USSR to solve a double-murder at a critical turning point in the war in this latest installment of critically acclaimed James R. Benn's WWII mystery series.
It’s September 1944, and the US is poised to launch Operation Frantic, a shuttle-bombing mission to be conducted by American aircraft based in Great Britain, southern Italy, and three Soviet airfields in the Ukraine. Tensions are already high between the American and Russian allies when two intelligence agents—one Soviet, one American—are found dead at Poltava, one of the Ukrainian bases. Billy is brought in to investigate, and this time he's paired, at the insistence of the Soviets, with a KGB agent who has his own political and personal agenda.
In the course of an investigation that quickly spirals out of control, Billy is aided by the Night Witches, a daring regiment of young Soviet women flying at night at very low altitudes, bombing hundreds of German installations.
It’s a turning point in the war, and allied efforts hang by a thread. Unless Billy and his KGB partner can solve the murders in an atmosphere of mutual distrust, Operation Frantic is doomed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The exhilarating opening of Benn's outstanding 16th WWII mystery featuring U.S. Army investigator Billy Boyle (after 2020's The Red Horse) finds Boyle aboard one of 75 Allied bombers under intense anti-aircraft fire as they approach their target, the oil refineries in Chemnitz, Germany, in September 1944. Shortly before the surviving bombers reach Poltava, a Soviet airbase in Ukraine, an attack by German fighters forces Boyle's sergeant and fellow investigator, Mike Miecznikowski, to parachute from his damaged plane. At Poltava, Boyle is partnered with a Soviet secret police agent in a joint operation between the OSS and the NKVD to discover who murdered the unpopular NKVD agent lieutenant Ivan Kopelev and the good-natured American sergeant Boris Morris. Duplicity and mistrust make the assignment more demanding, requiring Boyle to carefully navigate personal hostilities and ideological beliefs in pursuit of the culprit. The hunt for Miecznikowski raises the tension. Bolstered by vivid, scintillating descriptions of air strikes and dogfights involving the legendary all-female Soviet air force unit known as the Night Witches, Benn's high-intensity storytelling shines. This entry will leave fans eager for the next installment.
