The White Ghost
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4.5 • 46 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In the Pacific during WWII, Billy Boyle must discover if skipper, and future president, Jack Kennedy is a cold-blooded killer.
1943: In the midst of the brutal, hard-fought Solomon Islands campaign between the Allies and the Japanese forces, Lieutenant Billy Boyle receives an odd assignment: he’s sent by the powerful Kennedy family to investigate a murder in which PT skipper (and future president) Jack Kennedy has been implicated. The victim is a native coastwatcher, an allied intelligence operative, whom Kennedy discovered on the island of Tulagi with his head bashed in. That’s Kennedy’s story, anyhow.
Kennedy was recovering in the Navy hospital on the island after the sinking of his PT-109 motor torpedo boat. The military hasn’t decided yet whether to make him a hero for surviving the attack, or have him court-martialed for losing the boat, and the last thing the Kennedy clan wants is a murder charge hanging over his head. Billy knows firsthand that he shouldn’t trust Jack: the man is a charmer, a womanizer, and, when it suits his needs, a liar. But would he kill someone in cold blood? And if so, why? The first murder is followed by two more, and to find the killer, Billy must sort through a tangled, shifting web of motives and identities, even as combat rages all around him.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1943, Benn's intriguing 10th Billy Boyle whodunit (after 2014's The Rest Is Silence) takes the former Boston cop, now serving as a special investigator on General Eisenhower's staff, from Morocco to the Pacific, to handle a highly sensitive inquiry involving Jack Kennedy, a U.S. Navy lieutenant who recently survived the sinking of his PT boat. Jack is under suspicion for murder after finding the body of Daniel Tamana, a Guadalcanal native who served as a scout, with his head bashed in on Tulagi, another island in the Solomons. Since Billy has an unpleasant history with the Kennedy family, he has to be extremely careful in assessing the evidence. If Billy incriminates Jack, some people will think he's taking personal revenge. Tamana proves to be just the killer's first victim, but the motive for the crimes remains elusive. Benn does a good job of capturing life under the constant threat of Japanese attack and depicting the Kennedys as flawed human beings.
