The Confidence Men

How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History

By: Margalit Fox

Narrated by: Richard Elfyn

The Great Escape for the Great War: the astonishing true story of two World War I prisoners who pulled off one of the most ingenious escapes of all time.

Finalist for the Edgar® Award • Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post and NPR • “Fox unspools Jones and Hill’s delightfully elaborate scheme in nail-biting episodes that advance like a narrative Rube Goldberg machine.” (The New York Times Book Review)

Imprisoned in a remote Turkish POW camp during World War I, having survived a two-month forced march and a terrifying shootout in the desert, two British officers, Harry Jones and Cedric Hill, join forces to bamboozle their iron-fisted captors. To stave off despair and boredom, Jones takes a handmade Ouija board and fakes elaborate séances for his fellow prisoners. Word gets around, and one day, an Ottoman official approaches Jones with a query: Could Jones contact the spirit world to find a vast treasure rumored to be buried nearby? Jones, a trained lawyer, and Hill, a brilliant magician, use the Ouija board - and their keen understanding of the psychology of deception - to build a trap for their captors that will ultimately lead them to freedom.

A gripping nonfiction thriller, The Confidence Men is the story of one of the only known con games played for a good cause - and of a profound but unlikely friendship. Had it not been for “the Great War”, Jones, the Oxford-educated son of a British lord, and Hill, a mechanic on an Australian sheep ranch, would never have met. But in pain, loneliness, hunger, and isolation, they formed a powerful emotional and intellectual alliance that saved both of their lives.

Margalit Fox brings her “nose for interesting facts, the ability to construct a taut narrative arc, and a Dickens-level gift for concisely conveying personality” (Kathryn Schulz, New York) to this tale of psychological strategy that is rife with cunning, danger, and moments of high farce that rival anything in Catch-22.

©2021 Margalit Fox (P)2021 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Tales of spunky prisoners of war suffering horrifying privation or outfoxing their sadistic or imbecilic captors are a staple of military history and the movies.... Fact or fiction, few of them can match the latest entry in the genre.... Margalit Fox’s The Confidence Men tells the tale of two Allied officers captured by the Turks during World War I who escaped their remote prison camp by pulling an ingenious and elaborate spiritualist con on the camp’s greedy commandant.” (The Wall Street Journal)

“The Confidence Men couldn’t have come along at a better time. This story of two unlikely con artists - young British officers who use a Ouija board to escape from a Turkish prisoner-of-war camp - is a true delight, guaranteed to lift the spirits of anyone eager to forget today’s realities and lose oneself in a beautifully written tale of an exciting and deeply moving real-life caper.” (Lynne Olson, author of Madame Fourcade’s Secret War)

“Fox (Conan Doyle for the Defense), a former obituary writer for the New York Times, recounts in this marvelous history how two British army officers in WWI orchestrated ‘the most singular prison break ever recorded'.... Fox enriches her account with intriguing deep dives into the psychology of ‘coercive persuasion’, the mechanics of confidence games, and the history of spiritualism in the US and England. Readers will be mesmerized by this rich and rewarding tale.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

What a great story

Anybody who reads us book will be enthralled by the ingenuity of the two officers in the way in manner of their escape?

Too long

If I were a prisoner of war, I would never go through all of that for an attempted escape. I would either be better off as a prisoner, or dead from any other kind of escape. You must have a propensity to tell long boring useless stories to be able to go through all of that for so long to make an attempted escape. Not held in interest.

You think you don't like non-fiction?

Crack open The Confidence Men and see if it doesn't keep you turning pages all the way to the end. In addition to it being a compelling story, you end up learning a lot about the contradictions of the times -- late 19th century and early 20th century, when voices could, somehow, transmit through radio waves and the telephone. So why not telepathically?
Why shouldn't the dead speak to us?
These were the times in which Jones and Hill played their long, dangerous con in an attempt to escape from a Turkish prison.
And without being overt, what does this story tell us about those who believe the big lies and the con men of today?

Long haul to get to the story

The performance was good. I thought the story was funny and the two guys are brilliant. I think it was drawn out quite long - this could have been a cracked.com badass of the week post and covered it just fine. But overall, it was an enjoyable listen. I might even listen to it again some day.

Unbelievable

Truth is often stranger than fiction . This is mind-blowing with fantastic narration. Wow!

How to Play a Long Con

A great adventure in obscure history, a true story of war prisoners playing a long con - successfully on their captors. Well nearrated and easy to listen.

I’m debating listening again

At the end, there was a great deal of interesting information though throughout the story I debated on whether or not to keep listening because it was difficult for me to follow.

A Fascinating and Unorthodox POW Story

A truly remarkable story that combines meticulous escape plans with a study of spiritualism and con games, it is amazing that it all happened and is not more widely known. Excellent narration as well.

interesting

This prison was nothing like the Hanoi Hilton! They had mattresses and made beds out of crates. Their food was decent and even if the mail took forever they did get it. They were not being tortured every day etc. I probably would rather stay until the war ended. In Vietnam they did not have beds and ate a small amount of rice every day or so with bugs and worms cooked in it. The POW whose bracelet I wore for five years was held 7 1/2 years said they ate the bugs/worms for the protein.

This should have been a much shorter book. The info about spiritualism was too long I did not need the entire history, I did not need any history of it but I know other people needed a bit to be able to understand. There was way too much detail about the war in general and the specific area the prisoners were in. I think the two conspirators actually were selfish because they left their fellow soldiers behind and in a lot of services that is just not done.

home run as usual

Margarlit Fox has never failed to absolutely entrance me with her intricate weaving of multiple narratives. This was a fascinating look into the (relatively) modern histories of con games, communications technologies, war, and spiritualism, all wrapped up neatly in the particular story of a handful of particular people in a particular situation. Amazing.

And Richard Elfyn's voice acting was excellent. Very smooth and pleasant narrative with accents that added to the ability to hear dialogue changes.

Additionally, I appreciated that in the preface(?), a) Fox explained her decision to use historical place names, which I think was an excellent one; and b) when Elfyn read the variant spellings, he over-pronounced them and even specified "with an H". I am constantly disappointed by audiobooks that stick so literally to the text that visual information is lost. I don't know if those specifications were included in the original text or if the audio producers added them in for clarity for the listening audience, but I *deeply* appreciate it!