Proud Sorrows by James R. Benn
The title Proud Sorrows (Soho Crime), the 18th book in the WWII Billy Boyle mystery series by author James R. Benn, is taken from William Shakespeare’s history play, King John, Act 3, Scene 1: “I will instruct my sorrows to be proud, for grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.” The protagonist was introduced in the namesake novel Billy Boyle in 2006. It is set in 1942 when the USA had recently entered World War II following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
Irish Catholic Boston born and bred Billy was a Detective with the city’s police department, the latest family member to serve the force in a long line of Boston cops except for the one uncle who had been killed in combat during WWI. It was certain he would enlist or be drafted and his relatives hoped to keep him safe by using distant family ties to secure him a position on “Uncle Ike’s” staff.
General Dwight David (Ike) Eisenhower’s leadership and tactical skills during WWII saw him rapidly rise from two-star to five-star General becoming the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force. Impressed with his “nephew,” he brought him along as a staff investigator and crime solver. Second Lieutenant Billy Boyle quickly proved his mettle with professionalism, discretion and good old Yankee ingenuity although each assignment put him into graver danger than his family could ever have anticipated.
Action-Packed Historical Mystery
James R. Benn has written a smart, fast-paced, action-packed historical mystery series replete with liberal dashes of humor and romance providing broad appeal to readers of military history, thrillers and mysteries. He deftly combines a mélange of edge-of-your seat suspenseful situations with historical accuracy and engaging literary references.
The author is a stickler for wartime and period detail, thoroughly researching documentation to add engaging verisimilitude to Billy’s current tour of duty. He combs archives in several countries for source material and makes use of recently released secret documents from government intelligence agency files. While these novels are certainly entertaining, Billy Boyle is not a stick figure fighting endless battles against the forces of evil but a fully realized flesh and blood hero loyal to friends, family and loved ones with a keen sense of humor and fair play who is strongly patriotic without being xenophobic.
For readers with family members who served in WWII, James R. Benn addresses topics many of the “Greatest Generation” including my late father and uncle would seldom discuss except with fellow comrades-in-arms. The settings have included German-occupied Norway, the North Africa Campaign, Sicily, Italy, France, Spain, neutral Switzerland and as distant as the Solomon Islands but more frequently England. Billy Boyle has also worked with resistance organizations on site in Germany and Poland.
A Tightly-Paced Series
Seventeen years have passed since the series began, the first book first set in 1942, but the timeline in Proud Sorrows has only advanced to November, 1944. The now twice promoted Captain Billy Boyle is on leave after a harrowing autumn and looking forward to spending time with his beloved Diana Seaton. She is one of the primary recurring characters, a member of the British SOE and veteran of several dangerous missions. (The Special Operations Executive, formed in July, 1940, was a secret organization with the purpose of intelligence gathering, sabotage and reconnaissance behind enemy lines. The members were sometimes called “Churchill’s Army” or “The Baker Street Irregulars.”)
The couple is vacationing at Seaton Manor, the country estate of Diana’s father Richard Seaton, a former Naval Officer and war hero of WWI. Also present is Baron Piotr Augustus Kazimierz, aka “Kaz,” who was a university student in England in 1939, when Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany. He is a member of Poland’s government-in-exile and has worked on General Eisenhower’s staff as a translator since the Americans entered the war. His sister Angelika Kazimierz, also a welcome guest, a former courier with the Polish Underground, had barely survived imprisonment and torture in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp where she had met fellow prisoner Diana Seaton. Both were released only as a result of considerable effort.
Bodies and Secrets Wash Up
Eating, drinking and making merry quickly became unattainable pursuits when Billy’s leave is cut short. A German bomber that crashed two years earlier and, presumed to have been swept out to sea, suddenly resurfaces after a storm, buried in silt at the bottom of a cliff. It inexplicably contains the body of a missing British officer in the pilot’s seat as well as two German corpses. The Englishman is confirmed by dental records to have been the heir to the Marston Hall estate which intriguingly is the site of the crash. Marston Hall is currently occupied by the British government as the site of a top-secret military intelligence operation that houses high-ranking German officer POW’s. They are under 24 hour surveillance, housed and fed in comparative luxury and interrogated by German and Austrian born Jewish refugees serving as officers in the U.S. Army.
There is a suspected cadre of Imperial Fascist League members plotting in the area. This group of British Fascists is far more radical than Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. Marston Hall, Seaton Manor and the also imaginary village of Slewford are all a short distance from Sandringham, the country Royal Residence since Queen Victoria acquired the massive Norfolk estate in 1862. It’s a case of immense proportions with repercussions for British national security. Billy Boyle’s investigative skills are severely tested as he faces foes who do not hesitate to swiftly eliminate those who attempt to thwart their sinister plots.
Real-Life Cameos and Wartime Heroes
James R. Benn has once again splendidly melded riveting entertainment with events drawn from true wartime events occurring in both fictional and real places. He adds veracity to his plots through the use of cameo appearances of actual personages. In Proud Sorrows, popular RADA trained actor Ian Carmichael is featured as an old friend of Diana’s from her days of student theatrics. In fiction as well as reality, his acting career was interrupted by service with the 22nd Dragoons Royal Armoured Corps. As he lamented to Billy and Diana, he lost the tip of a finger when a turret hatch slammed down, abruptly severing it from the digit. Major Carmichael returned to acting in 1947 achieving success primarily with light comedy. He memorably played Bertie Wooster for three seasons in The World of Wooster and frequently performed as Lord Peter Wimsey on radio and television.
The fictional Marston Hall POW camp is staffed by The Ritchie Boys. These American intelligence officers were named for the clandestine Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie near Hagerstown, Maryland, a former National Guard camp taken over by the U.S. Army. It is estimated over 19,000 intelligence troops were trained there. The first class was comprised of just 32 soldiers, all Jewish refugees, many of whom spoke little English but were fluent in their native German and in other European languages. They were schooled in specialized and classified interrogation techniques, counter-intelligence, psychological warfare, code construction/deciphering and combat and terrain analysis. The approximately 2200 servicemen who were German or Austrian Jewish were valued and particularly effective interrogators.
I highly recommend Proud Sorrows whether you have read the entire series sequentially or this novel is your introduction to James R. Benn’s body of work. The Billy Boyle books really do work as stand-alone novels and will not disappoint casual readers or WWII military history aficionados.
