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A Blind Goddess (2013)

by James R. Benn(Favorite Author)

4.07 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1616951923 (ISBN13: 9781616951924)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Soho Crime

series

Billy Boyle World War II

review 1: I was worried about reading this because it has a plot that deals with racism during the war. Racism is ugly and I was worried I'd read something that would put me in a fetal position for days. However, James Benn is really good so I decided to trust his abilities, having read his other books and reviews for this one. I am glad I did. James Benn always includes some historically true detail in his book and it pays off in all his books. I am not so sure that the British were as welcoming to "negroes" as depicted in this book but perhaps its the difference of country and city life. I strongly recommend this to all my historical mystery readers!
review 2: Billy Boyle thinks he's taking a few days off but ends up working two cases: one official and the other ... moreunofficial for a friend. The principal plot of this book is not so much some murders and some MI5 spycraft but the reality of the segregated American Army. Billy's friend, Tree, is black and one of his soldiers has been wrongfully accused of murder. Tree is from Boston and his dad worked in the Boston Police but in an entirely different capacity-as a custodian. They knew each other as teenagers and had a falling out. Now they are meeting again as soldiers. Billy can't help Tree too much or overtly as he's been given an important super secret case to solve. Luckily it's nearby Tree's unit and the other crime. It looks like the two crimes could be related and Benn spins us back and forth linking and unlinking them. But the best "character" in the book is the racial tension between white soldiers and black soldiers. The title refers to Langston Hughes' poem in which lady justice is blind to black Americans. less

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