BLOOD ALONE by James R. Benn is the third in a Billy Boyle series, Copyright 2008. I enjoyed it, I rate it as a 9 or 10 on my read again in 20 years list. It is a WW2 novel, so there is some blood and gore in it, not enough so I found it objectionable, but I handle blood and gore in print quite well. Too much and I stop reading. It is well written and well edited. There is a bit too much description of sceneriies, buildings, skies, etc. for me. It would be a better book if it were 250 pages rather than 313. The epilogue describes how historically accurate it is, which I appreciated. I did learn some things from the book.
The library labeled it a “historical mystery” and there are at least two mystery themes. The first, and for me the most interesting, can be labeled “Who am I?” The first sentence of the jacket cover says that Billy wakes in a field hospital concussed and having amnesia, Billy is a Boston detective, and the 2nd theme is one of his detecting assignments as a first lieutenant attached to “Uncle Ike’s” headquarters. Some of the things Billy does seem to me psychologically unbelievable, even after he fully recovers from his initial, but by no means only blow on the head. The logic of the financial manipulations in the book seemed to me illogical, or perhaps my knowledge of Cosa Nostra and banking operations is faulty.