In 1918, one French lieutenant is willing to sacrifice his men in his ambition for glory, in this winner of the 2013 Prix Goncourt and the CWA International Dagger. After the war, two of those soldiers—Albert Maillard and the horribly disfigured Edouard Péricourt, who saved him—find France's gratitude to her veterans is only lip service. Struggling to earn a living, they devise a scam to take money for war memorials that will never be built. But the lieutenant, who has married Edouard's sister, has a much bigger plan for revenge.