The Confidence Men
How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History
by Margalit Fox
The recap
During the First World War, a group of prisoners of war waits out the fighting in a remote camp at Yozgad, in the heart of Turkey. Escape looks hopeless, boredom is constant, and so the men cobble together a homemade Ouija board from scraps. Elias Henry Jones, a quick-witted officer, begins to work the board, and what starts as a parlour game turns into the foundation of an audacious con. With the Australian airman Cedric Waters Hill as his partner, Jones conjures a chorus of spirits, a buried treasure and a story elaborate enough to ensnare the very men who are holding them captive. Margalit Fox, a longtime obituary writer for The New York Times, tells this almost unbelievable episode with the pace of a caper film, keeping readers in the same delicious suspense as the men the pair set out to fool. It is a war story with hardly a battle in it, built instead on nerve, theatre and two men trying to talk their way through a locked door.
Why read it
Perfect for readers who love heist stories, wartime oddities and the art of a good con, told with the momentum of a thriller.
Fun facts
- 01
The prisoners at the Yozgad camp improvised their Ouija board out of scrap materials.
- 02
Elias Henry Jones published his own account of the episode, The Road to En-Dor, in 1919.
- 03
Before turning to books, Margalit Fox wrote more than 1,400 obituaries for The New York Times, retiring from the paper's staff in 2018.
- 04
Jones's partner in the scheme, Cedric Waters Hill, was an Australian pilot.
