DEADLY DECEPTION



Deadly Deception (The Deadly Series) by Kate Parker

About the Book

 
Deadly Deception (The Deadly Series) 
Historical Cozy Mystery 4th in Series 
JDP Press (March 22, 2019) 
Paperback: 316 pages 
ISBN-10: 0997663758 
ISBN-13: 978-0997663754
Digital ASIN: B07NPCJYPX


                                                                    
Everyone hides secrets. Some provoke murder.
Olivia Denis discovers her father kneeling over the body of a man…a man who supposedly drowned in the Channel years before. Olivia wants to ring for help, her father wants to hide the body, but a mysterious phone call brings Scotland Yard to the murder scene. Olivia can’t stand by and let her maddening, disapproving father hang. To prove his innocence – and learn his secrets - she must work with a master spy. The search for clues takes Olivia to the continent and the Kent countryside, Hastings and London, pushing her deeper into the world of danger and deception.
As war between Germany and Britain stalks closer, the hunt for a Nazi collaborator intensifies. With a mounting death toll, Olivia knows she must unmask the killer or be the next to die.


Wilhelm Stieber and the Nazi spies

In reality, the spies Nazi Germany sent to Britain and the US before and during World War II were an unlucky or ill-trained lot. But the founder of modern German spying was a man named Wilhelm Stieber and more than a half-century before the time of Deadly Deception, he was highly successful in both spying and in setting up spy networks. I am using Stieber and an unnamed woman mentioned in British newspapers for the models of the spies in the Deadly Series, particularly Deadly Deception.
The origin of Deadly Deception came from a short piece I found in a 1938 London newspaper that spoke of an unknown woman, seen only in blurry photographs and known by a variety of names, who entered and left Britain seemingly at will and was believed to be taking intelligence about British infrastructure and military preparedness to Germany. I immediately started wondering who this woman was, how she was trained, and how she was entering and leaving the country without being identified.
Wilhelm Stieber began his career with the Berlin police and was quickly promoted to an inspector in the criminal division. King Frederick Wilhelm IV of Prussia named him Berlin’s chief of police. This gave him the position to begin setting up rings of informants with the idea of combating crime.
A falling out with the king led Stieber to leave the country. He went to Russia where he set up the division of the Tsarist secret police for hunting down political dissidents outside the country. This was called Okhrana and, after the Russian revolution, changed names several times until it became the KGB. Vladimir Putin, head of the KGB and now President of Russia, had a career in an organization begun by Wilhelm Stieber.
Eventually, Stieber could return to Prussia and befriended Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian chancellor. As Bismarck worked to unify all of Germany under Prussian rule, Stieber’s power grew. The first war Bismarck instigated was against the Austrian empire, and Stieber went behind Austrian lines disguised as a peddler with a cart full of cheap goods.  He befriended Austrian soldiers and they soon mentioned details of troop placements that Stieber sent back to Berlin. Germany won the war in 45 days.
Next, Bismarck set his sights on France. Stieber went to France for eighteen months, recording and evaluating all the details of the topography the German army might cross. Bridges, rivers, army camps, and the crops and cattle of every village were recorded. When the war began, the German officers knew where to forage food and what obstacles they would face. They were helped by the network of spies Stieber had bribed and bought across France. This network was maintained even after Stieber’s death. When the next war, World War I, came, Germany had the best network of spies across Europe.
When France sued for surrender, Stieber got himself hired as a French diplomat’s valet during the peace talks. He copied all of the French strategy papers and sent the information to Bismarck, who used this to get a better treaty for Germany.
Imagining what agents trained by Stieber would be able to accomplish and how they would go about their work helped me create some of my characters for Deadly Deception.
The Deadly Series, including the latest, Deadly Deception, can be found in e-books and paperbacks at your favorite online retailers, including:

About the Author


Kate Parker grew up in Washington, D C, spent several years along the Carolina coast, and now finds herself in the Colorado front range. All the time, she has been busy plotting to spend more time in her favorite city, London, where her books are set. So far, she hasn’t been able to build a time machine, so she has to visit historical sites and books to immerse herself in the details of life in bygone days.
2019 will see the publication of her fourth Deadly Series book, Deadly Deception, as well as a novella, The Mystery at Chadwick House. Chadwick House will both be for sale at the usual retailers plus given away to the readers of her newsletter. It is her first contemporary mystery. Later in the year, Kate plans on publishing the second Milliner Mystery. Her daughter has informed her this year she will also become the servant of a large, exuberant dog.
Author Links:
  Website: www.KateParkerbooks.com
  Facebook: www.Facebook.com/Author.Kate.Parker/
  Twitter: www.twitter.com/KateParkerbooks
  Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7123001.Kate_Parker
  Purchase Links - Amazon - B&N



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Comments

  1. Thank you for being part of the book tour for "Deadly Deception" by Kate Parker.

    Enjoyed learning more about Wilhelm Stieber. I would love the opportunity to read this great sounding book.
    2clowns at arkansas dot net

    ReplyDelete

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