Jack Tanner is just a working class lad from the west country. He doesn’t belong aboard a transport plane, waiting for his turn to jump into the darkness with an aim of landing somewhere in Sicily, hopefully to meet the Allies’ contact on the ground who can facilitate the imminent invasion of the same. It’s time for il duce to be bid arrivederci. That contact is a member of the Society of Honor, and the Allies’ curious collaboration with the Italian Mafia is explored somewhat in this book, giving an otherwise straightforward combat novel an interesting twist along with the usual Jack Tanner versus the Eminently Fraggable Officer thread that’s been used in most of the Tanner novels. It’s especially grating here, as Tanner and his immediate superior Major Peploe both have to contend with a new commander who is both craven and incompetent — not something someone you want leading you into an invasion against the combat veterans of the Wehrmacht.

Devil’s Pact has an odd beginning, in that Tanner is separated from his unit and tasked with escorting someone via paratroop drop to meet a Man of Honor in Sicily; after managing the mission despite things going sideways, Tanner evacuates and we leave behind the small-group action that defined the early novels in this series, going into the fullscale invasion of Sicily after some time back at camp, in which Tanner realizes that some loathsome officer from his early days has just been named his new commander, and still worse — some of the new arrivals to his unit are from the old homestead, and threaten to blab the secrets of a past Tanner is extremely taciturn about. The new officer, instead of focusing on the invasion, is instead wholly fixated on getting rid of Tanner – -again, not good when Germans in fortified positions are concerned, and such pettiness will cost more than a pound of flesh.

The Devil’s Pact was a solid end to this series, assuming Holland isn’t planning on writing any more. The setting of Sicily was fairly new to me (though Jeff Shaara visited it in his The Rising Tide, one of the first books I read on the blog), and I especially enjoyed the presence of the Mafia to add an interesting wrinkle to the Allies’ mission. Another appreciation is that the “Krauts and Eyeties”, as the Brits so lovingly refer to their opponents, are not reduced to Evil League of Evil-esque villains. The Italian officer is wholly sympathetic, unlike Tanner’s nemesis. My only grouse is that Tanner (and the reader, vicariously) don’t get to tackle and punch repeatedly the loathesome officer who gives Tanner such grief. I really hated him.