The Wilson Deception
The year 2014, the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War, aka World War I, marked the publication of many titles, fiction and non-fiction, on that war. Stewart’s mystery takes a slightly different tack, looking at the end of the war: the protracted peace negotiations and the seeds that were planted that allowed for World War II.
Rather than Wilson, Stewart’s protagonists are Dr. Jamie Fraser, who has been serving as an army doctor, and Speed Cook, former player in the Negro Leagues, now in Paris to clear his army sergeant son who has been accused of desertion. Fraser and Cook are old friends, and when Fraser is called to nurse the president through his influenza, he seizes the opportunity to advocate for Cook’s son, Joshua. Historical figures fill the pages of this mystery—Clemenceau, the French premier, Lloyd George, the British prime minister, and Allen and Foster Dulles, nephews of Secretary of State Robert Lansing. T.E. Lawrence stalks the peace treaty, advocating for Arab independence and is dismissed as a zealot.
This was a challenging mystery to untangle. The personal—the freedom of Joshua Cook—collides with the political—the younger Cook is secretly installed as a valet in Wilson’s household in Paris and Fraser and the elder Cook are blackmailed by the French to report on the president’s activities. The post-armistice negotiations provide a fascinating look at the jockeying for power among countries who are ostensibly allies. Hindsight allows for much clearer sightlines into the causes of the Second World War. What left me uneasy is what Stewart emphasizes—correctly—that individuals are unimportant in the political framework. Joshua Cook is known to be innocent, but those with the power to clear him are unconcerned that he is wrongly sentenced.
