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A Gentleman's Guide To Deception: Trust is a luxury. Deception is an art.
Paperback
Series: A Gentleman's Guide Mystery, Book 3
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ISBN13: 9798175106597
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 17 2026
Pages: 534
Weight: 1.40
Height: 1.32 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 17 2026
Pages: 534
Weight: 1.40
Height: 1.32 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The finest deception does not hide the truth. It makes the truth impossible to recognize. Julian Blackwood has learned not to trust appearances.
The former British intelligence officer has survived manufactured evidence, secret networks, hidden authorities, and enemies capable of turning the smallest human behaviour into a weapon. Yet his greatest challenge begins with a question far more personal than anything he has faced before: Who is Evelyn Calloway? A mysterious photograph from Paris shows something that should be impossible. Arthur Pendelton and Edmund Blackwood stand beside not one woman resembling Evelyn-but two.
The former British intelligence officer has survived manufactured evidence, secret networks, hidden authorities, and enemies capable of turning the smallest human behaviour into a weapon. Yet his greatest challenge begins with a question far more personal than anything he has faced before: Who is Evelyn Calloway? A mysterious photograph from Paris shows something that should be impossible. Arthur Pendelton and Edmund Blackwood stand beside not one woman resembling Evelyn-but two.
Then a message arrives. THE WRONG ONE CAME HOME. Julian's search for an explanation leads him into the buried history of JANUS, a Cold War intelligence programme built around a disturbing idea: an identity does not necessarily have to belong to a single person.
Names can be inherited. Behaviours can be learned. Records can be altered. Memories can be influenced. And when enough people agree about who someone is, the difference between identity and deception becomes dangerously difficult to prove. But someone has taken the principles behind JANUS even further.
Witnesses remember events that may never have happened. Independent accounts begin converging with suspicious precision. Old intelligence files contradict the people who created them. Even Julian's extraordinary ability to read behaviour becomes vulnerable when his adversary understands exactly what he is looking for.
Soon Julian confronts a possibility more unsettling than any false identity: What if the person interpreting the evidence can be manipulated just as easily as the evidence itself?
From London to Paris, Budapest, and the hidden archives of British intelligence, Julian must unravel a conspiracy in which truth is not simply concealed-it is constructed. Because when everyone remembers the same thing, agreement can look remarkably like proof.
And Julian Blackwood is about to discover that agreement is evidence. It is not truth.
Elegant, cerebral, and filled with secret identities, Cold War intrigue, psychological manipulation, and carefully layered twists, A Gentleman's Guide to Deception is the third Julian Blackwood mystery from Alistair Locke.
Names can be inherited. Behaviours can be learned. Records can be altered. Memories can be influenced. And when enough people agree about who someone is, the difference between identity and deception becomes dangerously difficult to prove. But someone has taken the principles behind JANUS even further.
Witnesses remember events that may never have happened. Independent accounts begin converging with suspicious precision. Old intelligence files contradict the people who created them. Even Julian's extraordinary ability to read behaviour becomes vulnerable when his adversary understands exactly what he is looking for.
Soon Julian confronts a possibility more unsettling than any false identity: What if the person interpreting the evidence can be manipulated just as easily as the evidence itself?
From London to Paris, Budapest, and the hidden archives of British intelligence, Julian must unravel a conspiracy in which truth is not simply concealed-it is constructed. Because when everyone remembers the same thing, agreement can look remarkably like proof.
And Julian Blackwood is about to discover that agreement is evidence. It is not truth.
Elegant, cerebral, and filled with secret identities, Cold War intrigue, psychological manipulation, and carefully layered twists, A Gentleman's Guide to Deception is the third Julian Blackwood mystery from Alistair Locke.
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