What is James R. Benn reading?

Featured at Writers Read: James R. Benn, author of The Phantom Patrol (A Billy Boyle WWII Mystery.

His entry begins:

The Bug in the Martini Olive and Other True Cases from the Files of Hal Lipset, Private Eye by Patricia Holt

Hal Lipset worked in the Army's Criminal Investigations Division during WWII and returned home to start his own private investigator business. He became a pioneer in electronic surveillance techniques, and Francis Ford Coppola's movie The Conversation was partly based on Lipset. The book, written by a former operative who worked for Lipset, shows how he used a mix of old and new techniques. Long, arduous days of surveillance and verifying detailed background checks, combined with devising and deploying new electronic surveillance devices. Lipset never...[read on]

About The Phantom Patrol, from the publisher:

An investigation into a gang of Nazi-affiliated art thieves leads Billy Boyle and his comrades directly into the line of fire at the catastrophic Battle of the Bulge.

Winter 1944: Months after the Liberation of France, ex-Boston cop Billy Boyle finds himself in a Paris reeling from the carnage it has endured but hopeful that an end to war is in sight. When Billy finds a rare piece of artwork after a tense shoot-out in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, he thinks it could be connected to the Syndicat du Renard, a shadowy network of Nazi sympathizers known to be smuggling stolen artwork out of France.

Trailing the Syndicat, Billy discovers that someone with a high level of communications clearance—someone in the Phantom regiment of the British Army—may be using his position to aid the thieves. Billy, determined to stop the abettor, heads up to the frontlines where he experiences a last-ditch battle against overwhelming odds. There, the ruinous Battle of the Bulge unfurls in the Ardennes Forest. Can Billy and his team survive the bracing onslaught and return the stolen artwork to its rightful protectors?

Learn more about the Billy Boyle WWII Mystery Series at James R. Benn's website.

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--Marshal Zeringue