It’s that time again! We’re diving into the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award 2022 nominees for Best Fact Crime, to see which ones are worth adding to your reading list.
Let’s start our look at the nominees with The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History by Margalit Fox.
During World War I, Ottoman forces took two Allied soldiers as prisoners of war: Harry Jones, an Oxford-educated barrister turned British soldier, and Cedric Hill, an Australian pilot with an interest in magic. The two concoct an elaborate ruse to deceive their captors and escape. The methods of their con: a homemade Ouija board and the archetypal and familiar quest for a lost treasure.
The POWs’ success hinges upon committing to the long con in unforgiving circumstances with the looming threat of illness, starvation, and death. They went to remarkable lengths to build trust in their spiritual abilities, including developing an elaborate coded language to allow them to mimic telepathy. Jones and Hill had to time their divulging of details of the treasure story just so to keep their captors hooked. Ultimately, Fox asserts, a bit of a cult sprung up around the two men and the non-existent spirit who was providing information on the fake treasure via Ouija board.