IT'S HERE!

My autographed copy from Jim arrived yesterday and I dived right in.

Executive summary: the best one yet.

Without giving away the great story, here’s what’s what:

The story starts with a BANG! Literally.

January, 1945: If US Army Captain Billy Boyle thinks a summons to Havana will give him a chance to sip a cold Hatuey under the Caribbean sun, the fantasy is dead on arrival. Within hours of landing, Billy and his partner-in-crime-solving, Lieutenant Piotr Kazimierz, are assigned to investigate the murder of a Navy intelligence officer. But as the men wait for an informant at a beachside bar, a bomb goes off, and they narrowly escape with their lives. Then the informant—a Cuban taxi driver named Hector Díaz—is found dead outside his apartment. What did Hector know? And who was so desperate to silence him?

Thrust into a double-murder investigation, Billy and Kaz team up with the brass at the British Legation in Havana, including none other than Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming, to gather intel from sources inside Havana’s criminal underworld. Their search takes them from Havana’s Chinatown to the Gran Casino Nacional, where notorious gangster Meyer Lansky offers his services if it means defeating the suspected common enemy—the Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence wing of the Nazi military—and finding out what sort of intelligence they are so hell-bent on keeping top-secret at this late stage in the war.

The release date for the book is September 1. Amazon’s taking preorders.

This is the best mystery series I have run across (Thanks Judith for the heads-up back when). The World War II history is accurate (even the stuff I hadn’t heard of before is right), and the mysteries are great. This is one series you need to start with Book 1, because the characters grow and change over the course of the war and their experiences. There’s lots of little joys throughout, particularly when Billy and the gang interact with an Actual Historical Person - their position in history is done with accuracy. I loved escaping from the Malmedy Massacre in Book 19, in a White Scout Car driven by Major David Niven, an intelligence officer in the British 21st Army Group (he was really there). Also in “The Rest Is Silence,” where he interacts with Lady Malawan (Agatha Christie) who provides an insight he uses in the investigation, at which point the reader discovers they have surfaced in Poirot novel.

Buy and read in confidence.