A consistently entertaining and enlightening book about "Operation Mincemeat," the British World War II deception that planted a dead body with forged papers claiming (contrary to reality) that the Anglo-US forces were going to invade Greece, not Sicily. In large part due to this deception, the Germans reinforced Greece over Sicily -- contributing to the success of the first Allied attack into Western Europe.

The book is exhaustive but not exhausting, tracing every aspect from the initial idea, the complications associated with locating a suitable body, what to put in the pockets to make it look genuine (theater tickets from what was meant to be his last night in London), how to insert it in the water (by submarine, but faking a plane accident), where to leave it (cost of Spain, so it would fall into German-sympathetic hands), how to reinforce the deception, etc. The amount of work that went into it on the British side is extraordinary, for example going through dozens of drafts of the forged letters to get them just right.

What is also extraordinary is how despite, or in some cases even because of, all this work how much of it was done carelessly and ended up succeeding through a combination of luck, German ineptitude, and possibly even fifth columnists in key positions on the German side. From the sound of it more than one hundred people were in on the deception which, from my experience, is about ninety more people than can be counted on to keep a secret. Most surprisingly, the body lay in a London morgue for two months before being delivered off the water