Billy Boyle's illustrious debut as his Uncle "Ike" Eisenhower's personal wartime investigator set the stage for twenty years of the critically acclaimed WWII mystery series. This special edition includes a lost prologue, an introduction by the author, and a foreword by Deanna Raybourn. What's a twenty-two-year-old Irish American cop who's never left Massachusetts doing in the English countryside, eating lunch with King Haakon of Norway? Billy Boyle himself wonders. Back home in Southie, he'd barely made detective when war was declared. Determined to avoid fighting--and possibly dying--for England, he was relieved when his mother wangled a job for him on the staff of a general married to her distant cousin. But it turns out the general in question is none other than Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose headquarters are in London, the epicenter of the Blitz. And Uncle Ike wants Billy to be his personal investigator.

Which is how Billy finds himself lunching with King Haakon in England, where the Norwegians are discussing Operation Jupiter, an Allied offensive in Norway--but is there a German spy amongst them? A theft and two murders put Billy's investigative powers to the test in this spectacular opening to the now-iconic historical mystery series.