Comes the War

Starred review from November 30, 2020
Set in April 1944, Ruggero’s taut sequel to 2020’s Blame the Dead finds Lt. Eddie Harkins, a former Philadelphia beat cop, reassigned to the London branch of the Office of Strategic Services after a stint as an MP. On Harkins’s first day on the new job, he’s dispatched to an alley to examine the corpse of Helen Batcheller, an economic analyst for the OSS. Someone slashed her throat and left her to bleed to death. The absence of one of the dead woman’s shoes suggests that she may have been attacked by a sex fetishist who removed the footwear as a souvenir. Other suspects include Soviet operatives who Batcheller knew were secretly working to plant moles in the British and American governments. These ostensible allies might have silenced her to preserve their subversive mission. The sensitivity of the victim’s work complicates Harkins’s search for the truth. Ruggero recreates the period’s feel, months before the Normandy invasion, while playing fair with the reader. His superior storytelling makes comparisons to James Benn appropriate. Agent: Matt Bialer, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc.

January 1, 2021
The last time we saw Lieutenant Eddie Harkins, he was a U.S. Army MP in Sicily, thrust into the unfamiliar role of solving a murder. Now it's April 1944, and Harkins, reassigned to the OSS, is in London, where murder comes calling again. This time the victim is OSS analyst Helen Batcheller. Harkins is drafted to investigate, and while his CO is eager to close the case, Eddie has doubts about the guilt of an American pilot who was with Helen the night of the murder. He continues to dig, with the able assistance of his resourceful British driver, Private Pamela Lowell (think Samantha Stewart in Foyle's War), uncovering a link to the Russians with whom Helen may have been sharing information relating to the American and British bombing strategy. Meanwhile, in a somewhat unnecessary subplot, Harkins finds himself in the middle of the bungled Operation Tiger, a D-Day preparation exercise covered more fully in James R. Benn's The Rest Is Silence (2014). That aside, this is a solid series entry, awash in rich detail about the machinations leading up to the Normandy landings.

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