James R. Benn's thoughtful World War II series featuring U.S. Army investigator Billy Boyle enhances its gripping plots with actual situations faced by Allied soldiers. In The Phantom Patrol, looted artwork becomes a link to the Syndicat du Renard, a criminal gang of Nazi sympathizers, and to the planning of what history will call the Battle of the Bulge.
The Phantom Patrol opens in December 1944, as Boyle and other members of the Counter Intelligence Corps engage in a rousing shoot-out in Paris's famed Père Lachaise cemetery, which leads them to a Gustav Klimt drawing bound for the black market. The novel's brisk action follows Boyle and his partner, British Army Lieutenant Piotr Augustus "Kaz" Kazimierz, through France and Belgium as they search for evidence about the syndicate and its plans for the war.
Benn (The Refusal Camp) brings readers to the battlefields and to the grounds of Versailles, which the Army's Office of Special Investigations uses. Real events, such as a scene in which Nazi SS troops massacre American soldiers, heighten the plot. A visit to a remote Parisian warehouse reveals a chilling sight: the contents of scores of homes owned by Jewish families who have been forcibly transported to concentration camps. The novel's authenticity is enhanced by the inclusion of historical figures, such as CIC special agent Jerome David Salinger, who plans to become a writer (he ended up publishing under just his first two initials), and Major David Niven, who put his acting career on hold for the war. The Phantom Patrol is a freshly riveting twist on a well-documented moment in time. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer