“The world is balanced on a precipice; the slippery slope leading right into Hell, and all it will take for the world to topple, is for Hitler to sneeze.”

Ian Richardson, the hero of Deception, is a bilingual analyst for the British government. He is ordered to go to Berlin and keep abreast of Hitler’s rise to power.

Keeping a low profile, he reports on the rise of the Nazi Party during the 1933-1935 military buildup. Ian meets Elsbet Von Rippenhof, a documentarian for the Hindenburg Regime. Elsbet is working for the German Republic in Whitehall, and they fall in love, but their love, and ultimately their marriage are also casualties of the war; the war Ian saw coming but Elsbet refused to acknowledge. Elsbet returns to Germany after Hitler’s rise to power and Ian travels to Berlin often to compel her to return. But she refuses. Their daughter is born in November 1939 and Elsbet knows she is trapped “until the end.”

Deception is filled with actual events of double agents and misinformation the British used during the war that enrich the narrative.