James R. Benn: Road of Bones
This book will be published on September 7.
For new readers, the Billy Boyle books are set during WWII and feature an army captain, Billy, who investigates the murders that occur on the edges (or directly inside of) the war. It’s now 1944, and after giving Billy a bit of a break in the last book, The Red Horse, author James Benn plunges Billy and his sidekick Big Mike directly into the action. Road of Bones begins and ends with two bravura action scenes, a type of writing at which Benn excels. Action scenes can easily become dull or repetitive (to this crime reading veteran, anyway), but Benn is specific, descriptive in a concise way, and the pacing of his action scenes is perfection. The more I read, the more I think pacing is all, and Benn has the gift.