{"product_id":"fortune-s-spear-book-martin-vander-weyer-9781907642319","title":"Fortune's Spear","description":"Gerard Lee Bevan was the model of an Edwardian swell - arrogant, smooth, well-connected and highly cultured. He married money and influence - his wife Sophie Kenrick was a cousin of the future prime minister Neville Chamberlain - and over the years he kept a string of showgirl mistresses.  But his was a success built on fraud and deception, and eventually Bevan could sustain the fiction no longer. After a series of desperate swerves, he fled the country on 8 February 1922, abandoning his family and leaving his stockbroking and insurance empire in ruins. Thus began an extraordinary flight across Europe - disguised as a Frenchman, using a stolen passport, with his mistress at his side. His subsequent arrest in Vienna, and the Old Bailey trial that followed, would shock the entire country.  'Fortune's Spear' is a parable of the way in which the prospect of easy money draws risk-takers in every era into a spiral of greed and deceit. Bevan may have been forgotten, but he richly deserves to be remembered. Drawing on c ontemporary evidence and told with novelistic flair, Martin Vander Weyer's gripping biography brings him vividly to life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49596943401233,"sku":"GOR003611269","price":20.89,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51871395250449,"sku":"GOR006567320","price":20.89,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51875093053713,"sku":"GOR011379287","price":20.89,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53026678374673,"sku":"GOR014703963","price":20.89,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1907642315.jpg?v=1750804192","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-au\/products\/fortune-s-spear-book-martin-vander-weyer-9781907642319","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}