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  • Published: 15 August 2015
  • ISBN: 9781616955700
  • Imprint: Soho Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $36.00

The Rest Is Silence




The ninth installment in James R. Benn's Billy Boyle WWII mystery series.

The fog of war surrounding D-Day and Operation Tiger provides cover for one of Billy Boyle's grisliest investigations.

When an unidentified corpse washes ashore at Slapton Sands on England's southern coast, US Army Captain Billy Boyle and his partner, Lieutenant Piotr "Kaz" Kazimierz, are assigned to investigate. The Devonshire beach is the home to Operation Tiger, the top-secret rehearsal for the approaching D-Day invasion of Normandy, and the area is restricted; no one seems to know where the corpse could have come from. Luckily, Billy and Kaz have a comfortable place to lay their heads at the end of the day: Kaz's old school chum David lives close by and has agreed to host the two men during their investigation. Glad for a distraction from his duties, Billy settles into life at David's family's fancy manor, Ashcroft, and makes it his mission to get to know its intriguing cast of characters.

Just when Billy and Kaz begin to wrap up their case, they find themselves with not one soggy corpse on their hands but hundreds following a terrible tragedy during the D-Day rehearsal. To complicate things, life at Ashcroft has been getting tense: secret agendas, buried histories, and family grudges abound. Then one of the men meets a sudden demise. Was it a heart attack? Or something more sinister?

  • Published: 15 August 2015
  • ISBN: 9781616955700
  • Imprint: Soho Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $36.00

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Praise for The Rest Is Silence

Praise for The Rest Is Silence

  • "A double-edged sword of a novel. A ripping murder mystery and a meditation on the terrible costs of war--hidden and otherwise."--Reed Farrel Coleman

  • Praise for James R. Benn's A Blind Goddess

  • "James Benn has written a gripping and entertaining mystery, but also . . . realistically and sensitively explores the rarely discussed race relations and power struggles in the U.S. Armed Forces in World War II Britain."--Susan Elia MacNeal, author of the Maggie Hope mystery series
  • "One of Mr. Benn's best books of the series . . . A pleasure to read."--Seattle Post-Intelligencer
  • "[An] excellent eighth Billy Boyle whodunit . . . The superior plot and thoughtful presentation of institutional racism directed against American soldiers about to risk their lives for their country make this one of Benn's best."--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review