How a lawyer and a magician became the greatest conmen in World War I
E. H. Jones and Cedric Waters Hill were British POWs at Turkey's Yozad Prison Camp during World War I. Its location was so remote that it was touted to be "escape-proof".
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Prisoners who were officers were better treated than the soldiers; they were not required to work. To kill of their boredom, Jones, a lawyer, and Hills, a magician, built a Ouija board to entertain their comrades. At first they were faking their communication with the dead for fun. They were so convincing that a Turkish commander agreed to let them out of the camp to find a buried treasure. They manipulated his greed and superstition and plotted their escape with one deception after another.
The astonishing true story of two First World War prisoners who pulled off one of the most ingenious escapes of all time.
Imprisoned in a remote Turkish POW camp during the First World War, two British officers, Harry Jones and Cedric Hill, cunningly join forces. To stave off boredom, Jones makes a handmade Ouija board and holds fake seances for fellow prisoners. One day, an Ottoman official approaches him with a query: could Jones contact the spirits to find a vast treasure rumoured to be buried nearby? Jones, a lawyer, and Hill, a magician, use the Ouija board - and their keen understanding of the psychology of deception-to build a trap for their captors that will lead them to freedom.
The Confidence Men is a nonfiction thriller featuring strategy, mortal danger and even high farce - and chronicles a profound but unlikely friendship
(Hardcover / 352 pages / $36 / Published in June)
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