In the 14th Billy Boyle mystery, US Army detective Billy Boyle and Lieutenant Kazimierz travel into the heart of Nazi-occupied Paris on a dangerous mission: ensure a traitor to the French Resistance unwittingly carries out a high-stakes deception campaign. August, 1944: US Army detective Billy Boyle is assigned to track down a French traitor, code-named Atlantik, who is delivering classified … delivering classified Allied plans to German leaders in occupied Paris. The Resistance is also hot on his trail and out for blood, after Atlantik’s previous betrayals led to the death of many of their members. But the plans Atlantik carries were leaked on purpose, a ruse devised to obscure the Allied army’s real intentions to bypass Paris in a race to the German border. Now Billy and Kaz are assigned to the Resistance with orders to not let them capture the traitor: the deception campaign is too important. Playing a delicate game, the chase must be close enough to spur the traitor on and visible enough to ensure the Germans trust Atlantik. The outcome of the war may well depend on it.
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A Well-Crafted Wartime Backdrop for a Somewhat Clumsy Mystery
Author James Benn’s depiction of the events leading up to and during the Liberation of Paris—the backdrop for When Hell Struck Twelve—is outstanding. The Germans are retreating from Normandy after their defeat at the Battle for Hill 262. On the Battle’s 20th anniversary, President Eisenhower said that “… no other battlefield presented such a horrible sight of death, hell, and total destruction.” Benn’s description in the opening chapters of the book does that statement justice. As the Germans retreat toward Paris after the defeat, a power vacuum is created, letting factions within the French resistance settle old scores. It’s not enough that the French are killing Germans and vice versa; the French are also killing each other. Our main characters, US Army detective Billy Boyle and Lieutenant Kazimierz (Kaz) find themselves entangled in this purgatory, witnessing the horrors of war from tank and gun battles on the streets of Paris to clandestine torture and murder in backrooms and deserted buildings. The psychological costs are also felt as our heroes develop mysterious headaches and uncontrollable muscle tremors. It’s a dark, brutal, unrelenting world compellingly drawn by Benn.
This stellar setting provides a backdrop to a mystery that, unfortunately, feels contrived and convenient. The Allied army leaks plans for the liberation of Paris to a French traitor, while actually, they plan to skirt the city and trap the Germans there. But rather than letting the Germans believe the traitor has succeeded in his espionage, Billy, Kaz, and the French raise a ruckus in their pursuit of the man. As the author notes, that reaction gives the stolen plans credibility, but it also makes them worthless. The Allies would just go to Plan B for the liberation of the city now that the theft is known; that is, unless they had no time to change plans. But they have time and in fact do change their minds, deciding to take Paris rather than bypassing it. Of course, the French traitor would have only been allowed to steal fake plans, right? Not so quick. Apparently, the Allies seeded their ruse with the real (and only?) plans for liberating Paris, because now they want to use them. There is apparently no Plan B as Billy and Kaz are sent off to stop the traitor who has been on the run for at least a day. He could have made copies. He could have talked to any number of people, both in person and on the phone. Other than providing a reason for Billy and Kaz to enter Paris (and the story to continue), why would the Allies do such a thing? There’s another change of direction in this basic storyline and several more bizarre coincidences that keep the mystery feeling fantastical, rather than real to the very end.
With a bit of work on the plot, Billy and Kaz could have ended up in the middle of the Liberation of Paris in ways that were both historically consistent and logically plausible. But as the book is written, the fiction felt like a somewhat clumsy add-on.