FROM THE SHADOWS by James R. Benn, Intriguing Billy Boyle World War II Mystery

As the 17th Billy Boyle investigation opens, it's October 1944, and the long-hoped-for end to World War II is still a long way off in terms of daily life. Sure, the Germans are retreating from France—but what permanent changes have they left behind among the people who stay? Who's been and remains a traitor (and France has flip-flopped some ... it's been hard to tell what was right), and who's still destroying humans and landscape on behalf of "the Boche"? 

Forms of violent payback flourish. So for Billy Boyle, a criminal investigator in General Eisenhower's special staff, every step forward holds peril from two sides at once. Delivered by boat to occupied Crete, on a "simple" pickup assignment to bring a Special Operations Executive officer to France, Billy finds his blunt American assessment of good guys and bad ones under challenge right away. And he'll have to test each ally as he goes along, because nobody's telling him much that he can rely on:

The brass wanted him for some SOE business in the south of France. That's all I was told because that's all I needed to know. Need to know is a big thing in this war, a concept I never much liked. As I gazed out over the unwelcoming shore while we rolled on the dying swells, I would have preferred to know why I was risking my neck.

Series fans and new readers alike will appreciate Billy's relief when he finds his trustworthy and intriguing Polish friend Kaz joining the mission in France. But on their way up the steps to their first joint meeting with the brass, shots ring out,. "I instinctively turned to look," Billy describes, "and heard a sharp sound, followed by a sting at the back of my neck." Nicked by a bullet, Billy's wound isn't bad, although another has pierced the top of Kaz's pierced military cap. Either there are some might casual shooters on the base, or a really accurate sniper has just delivered a warning.

Part of the intense interest of James R. Benn's Billy Boyle mysteries is the way Benn assembles details of the war that aren't often taught in the American classroom. This time, in addition to a failed uprising in the French resistance, and all the friction among passionate groups, there's a remarkable addition to the armed forces at hand: the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a unit of Nisei (men of Japanese descent born in America and eager to enlist). 

FROM THE SHADOWS refreshes the feel of a more raw America where national origins and ethic differences had high significance. From Billy Boyle's American-Irish background, it's an unusual reach to men whose Japanese families may even be suffering internment in California. Every chapter ends with a clif-hanger, and offers historical and human revelation, along with solving the conundrum of who's taken up crime in the ranks.

The book has a September 6 release date from Soho Press. Cushion the onslaught of back-to-school calendars, ends of vacation, and autumn changeable weather by ordering a copy for your reading stack. Every twist is well knotted, and Benn pulls off another satisfying investigation into the human reality of war, crime, friendship, and honor.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Teen Crime Fiction from Francesca Padilla, WHAT'S COMING TO ME

Drugs, crime, poverty, and a dying mother—17-year-old Minerva Guitiérrez has a job at an ice cream shop that comes with off-the-books payments, a creepy boss, and, as this fast-paced thriller opens, a terrifying attack by violent thieves attacking the cash business. So how can she possibly cope with all the lousy cards that life has dealt her?

Francesca Padilla's writing arrives with enormous integrity and realism: There are no easy solutions to Min's problems. Just as her mother is definitely going to die, Min is definitely going to suffer from the bad choices she makes, typical at first of any other teen, then increasingly dangerous. 

Yet Min's strikingly clear-sighted about how she's boxed herself in:

If I'd told Mom about the hiring process and the cameras back when I first started at Duke's and she was still home, she would've stormed Anthony's office and dragged him into the street. She and Nicole always swore the women in our family have a secret brute strength in times of great distress.

But I have never told her how messed up my job or Anthony truly is. I was too relieved to have found a job at all—and even though she never said it out loud, Mom was relieved, too.

So she can't risk losing her job, can she? You already know, even if she doesn't, that the only solutions available will need her to collaborate with her friends and allies. But for a prickly teen, that's going to be almost as dark and risky as the crimes surrounding her.

Teens tend to "read older" than they are, so go ahead and share this or buy it specifically for the teen in your life. Then make sure to fit in some discussion time. We need less nightmares in our lives as we grow up—Min needs to open up, and so do the young readers of this well-written and challenging novel.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Michael Stanley, A DEADLY COVENANT, A Detective Kubu Mystery

The mysteries by Michael Stanley—a pen name for the team of Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip—have a somewhat muddled publishing history. A DEADLY COVENANT is the seventh in the team's Detective Kubu series, and is published by White Sun Books, which only publishes this author ... so is probably best defined as self-publishing. Still, it's worth taking a look at this title to add it to the shelf if you've started a collection of the series, or have an interest in Sub-Saharan Africa as a locale for mysteries.

"Kubu" is a nickname that means hippopotamus, for Detective Sergeant David Bengu of the Bostwana Criminal Investigation Department. It's an unfortunate nickname, prone to disrespect, but this detective usually feels he's made a connection with people when they start using it. (Glass half full.) Being sent on a five-day trip to distant Shakawe with the department's pathologist, Ian MacGregor, looks likely to expose all of Kubu's insecurities and inexperience. But MacGregor is genial and supportive, and at first it looks like they just need to identify a long-buried skeleton as human, so an irrigation project can continue.

However, the crime scene quickly grows complicated, with multiple Bushman bodies suggesting a long-ago massacre; then a local counsellor gets murdered, and Kubu finds himself in the minority in believing that the lone Bushman is the area might not be responsible. Not only is he swimming upstream against prejudice against the Bushman, but there's some sort of collusion going on in the settlement's government and those pressing the water project forward. 

Eventually, Kubu learns some ways to keep the investigation going, like telling a local leader, "We don't want some civil-rights lawyer getting the Bushman off on the grounds that we did a bad job, do we?"

The mystery moves briskly and has an intriguing plot. It does, however, feel a bit dated, in both the clumsiness of the investigation and the local real estate corruption, and in Detective Kubu's unsophisticated approach. Those who prefer ethnic portrayals to be written by members of those ethnic groups will find this an uncomfortable narrative. This again suggests that the series is no longer timely. Like Arthur Upfield's "Bony" series set in Australia, Michael Stanley's books represent a very different time with different expectations of both authors and characters.

Despite this caution, the books have support from Ghanaian-American author Kwei Quartey. So, go ahead a pick up the latest in the series—then let your thoughts engage with our changing cultures, while you watch Kubu solve the multiplying crimes around him.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.