The Ninth Circle

In the latest installment of this fan-favorite WWII mystery series,;US Army Captain Billy Boyle is dispatched to Cuba, where he makes unlikely alliances to defeat a common enemy. January, 1945: If Billy Boyle thinks a summons to Havana will give him a chance to sip a cold Hatuey under the Caribbean sun, the tropical fantasy is dead on arrival. Within hours of landing, Billy and his partner-in-crime-solving, Lieutenant Piotr Kazimierz, are assigned to investigate the murder of a Navy intelligence officer. But as the men wait for an informant at a beachside bar, a bomb goes off--and they narrowly escape with their lives. Then the informant--a Cuban taxi driver named Hector Díaz--is found dead outside his apartment. What did Hector know? And who was so desperate to silence him? Thrust into a double-murder investigation, Billy and Kaz team up with the brass at the British Legation in Havana, including none other than Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming, to gather intel from sources inside Havana’s criminal underworld. Their search takes them from Havana’s Chinatown to the Gran Casino Nacional, where notorious gangster Meyer Lansky offers his services if it means defeating the suspected common enemy--the Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence wing of the Nazi military--and finding out what sort of intelligence they are so hell-bent on keeping top-secret at this late stage in the war.

Autorentext

James R. Benn

Klappentext

**To solve a double murder in Cuba, US Army Captain Billy Boyle will need to build unlikely alliances with Havana’s underworld and British intelligence, including Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming, whose naval wartime service would later inspire the James Bond novels.

This installment of James R. Benn’s fan-favorite, critically-acclaimed WWII mystery series marks 20 years of Billy Boyle, an Irish American cop from Boston thrust onto the staff of his “uncle” Ike Eisenhower for sensitive overseas military investigations.**

January, 1945: If US Army Captain Billy Boyle thinks a summons to Havana will give him a chance to sip a cold Hatuey under the Caribbean sun, the fantasy is dead on arrival. Within hours of landing, Billy and his partner-in-crime-solving, Lieutenant Piotr Kazimierz, are assigned to investigate the murder of a Navy intelligence officer. But as the men wait for an informant at a beachside bar, a bomb goes off, and they narrowly escape with their lives. Then the informant—a Cuban taxi driver named Hector Díaz—is found dead outside his apartment. What did Hector know? And who was so desperate to silence him?

Thrust into a double-murder investigation, Billy and Kaz team up with the brass at the British Legation in Havana, including none other than Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming, to gather intel from sources inside Havana’s criminal underworld. Their search takes them from Havana’s Chinatown to the Gran Casino Nacional, where notorious gangster Meyer Lansky offers his services if it means defeating the suspected common enemy—the Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence wing of the Nazi military—and finding out what sort of intelligence they are so hell-bent on keeping top-secret at this late stage in the war.

Zusammenfassung
In the latest installment of this fan-favorite WWII mystery series, US Army Captain Billy Boyle is dispatched to Cuba, where he makes unlikely alliances to defeat a common enemy.

January, 1945: If Billy Boyle thinks a summons to Havana will give him a chance to sip a cold Hatuey under the Caribbean sun, the tropical fantasy is dead on arrival. Within hours of landing, Billy and his partner-in-crime-solving, Lieutenant Piotr Kazimierz, are assigned to investigate the murder of a Navy intelligence officer. But as the men wait for an informant at a beachside bar, a bomb goes off, and they narrowly escape with their lives. Then the informant—a Cuban taxi driver named Hector Díaz—is found dead outside his apartment. What did Hector know? And who was so desperate to silence him?

Thrust into a double-murder investigation, Billy and Kaz team up with the brass at the British Legation in Havana, including none other than Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming, to gather intel from sources inside Havana’s criminal underworld. Their search takes them from Havana’s Chinatown to the Gran Casino Nacional, where notorious gangster Meyer Lansky offers his services if it means defeating the suspected common enemy—the Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence wing of the Nazi military—and finding out what sort of intelligence they are so hell-bent on keeping top-secret at this late stage in the war.

Leseprobe
Chapter One
January 1945

I drank my Hatuey as I watched the sun’s rays dance on the water. I was with my good friend Kaz and my new friend Max. We sat outside El Tiburón, a run-down bar along the waterfront with a view of the marina across the bay where boats bobbed on the incoming tide. In front of us a rickety wooden pier looked ready to collapse onto the rocky shore. The bar wasn’t in any better shape. El Tiburón was a small joint with nothing but unenthusiastic palm trees on one side and a stack of cinder blocks waiting to become a sturdier dive bar on the other. Constructed of weathered planks and rusted corrugated metal, it looked like the remnants of a hurricane. But the beer was cold, we had a clear view of anyone passing by, and we were alone.

Even the barman, Bembe, had disappeared out back. The fact that we were all sporting pistols may have caused him to vanish, but I doubted anyone in this neighborhood would swoon at the sight of a firearm.

I pulled the chair next to me closer so I could keep one hand on the small canvas carryall. Kaz rolled his eyes, but I couldn’t help being nervous. It’s not every day a guy waits in a seedy bar with twenty thousand pesos wrapped around thirty British gold sovereigns. The cash was close to a thousand bucks if my math was right. But the gold was serious money.

Which made me wonder, Why was our contact late?

Bembe had told us the man we were waiting for was expected in half an hour, but that was an hour ago. He’d refused to say anything else, not even when Max pressed a hundred peso note into his hand. As Max turned to search for the barman, his guayabera rode up, revealing a snub-nosed revolver tucked into his waistband. Max got up and walked to the shack, slammed his empty beer bottle down on the varnished bar, and called Bembe’s name.

Nothing.

“What is that?” Kaz said, pointing to the end of the bar. From my angle, I could see a scuffed leather case laid on its side.

“A briefcase,” Max said. “It wasn’t here before. Maybe Bembe left it.”

Kaz was up in one swift movement and at the bar in two strides, his ear cocked to the briefcase. I didn’t like the look on his face.

“Run!” Kaz shouted as he bounded to the embankment. He jumped to the stone-strewn shore with Max on his heels and me half a second behind. Once we hit the sand Max craned his neck to look back, but Kaz pulled him down as I pressed myself against the rock wall.

The explosion was a sharp crack that sent a shockwave through my body as I huddled against the embankment. A shattering boom followed as debris flew in every direction and cascaded down over us.

Kaz said something but my ears were ringing.

“What?”

“Ticking,” he shouted. “I heard ticking.”

“Bembe,” Max said, his revolver at the ready. “No wonder he left.”

“He’ll be back,” I said. The words echoed in my head as I struggled to overcome the effects of the blast.

“Or whoever paid hi…