The Devouring
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A murder in wartime Switzerland reveals Swiss complicity with the Nazis in World War II, and US Army detective Billy Boyle is called to investigate.
Europe, 1944: Captain Billy Boyle and his friend Lieutenant Piotr “Kaz” Kazimierz are sent to neutral Switzerland to work with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), investigating Swiss banks that are laundering looted Nazi gold. The US and Swiss governments are about to embark on diplomatic discussions regarding the Safehaven Protocols, aimed at limiting the amount of war materials exported by Switzerland to the Nazis, stemming the tide of looted gold, and preventing postwar use of Nazi wealth by war criminals. With the talks about to begin and the Gestapo ever present, the OSS wants Billy and Kaz to protect the participants, which turns out to be a very deadly task.
The plans go wrong from the beginning when Billy and Kaz crashland in France. As they make their way through occupied territory to the border, they meet Anton Lasho, a member of the Sinti ethnic group, whose family was slaughtered by the Nazis, and who is, in turn, a one-man Nazi-killing machine. They’ll need his help, because as they find once they make it across the border, Swiss banks are openly laundering gold “harvested” from concentration camps, and those who are profiting will do everything they can to protect their wealth and hide their dark secrets.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Switzerland provides the setting for Benn's suspenseful 12th whodunit featuring U.S. Army investigator Billy Boyle (after 2016's Blue Madonna). Billy and his colleague and friend Piotr "Kaz" Kazimierz, a lieutenant in the Polish Army in exile, are supposed to be flown from England into occupied France and dropped near the Swiss border, but the mission goes awry after their plane is shot down by the Germans, killing the pilot. Billy and Kaz manage to make it into Switzerland, with the assistance of a member of the Sinti ethnic group bent on revenge against the Nazis. Once they reach Geneva, their contact, Maureen Conaty, explains that they are to help with Operation Safehaven, an OSS effort to identify hidden German funds so that the U.S. treasury can "negotiate with neutral governments to keep the money out of the hands of the Nazis and use it to rebuild Europe after the war." The pair is soon investigating a murder, and Benn does his usual excellent job of incorporating historical background into a fast-paced plot, which barely slows down on the way to the satisfactory resolution.
