Zigzag: The Incredible Wartime Exploits of Double Agent Eddie Chapman

Although the narrative style of 'Zigzag' by Nicholas Booth isn't as fast paced as Ben Macintyre's 'Agent Zigzag' (which, incidentally, also details the life and adventures of real life WWII superspy Eddie Chapman and was published at the same time) it provides much background and historical context material left out of Macintyre's book. My suggestion, though, is to read Macintyre's 'Agent Zigzag' first. It reads like a great spy novel; once you pick it up, you can't put it down, and it's all true! (I was glued to it and finished it in two nights.) If your reaction is anything like mine, you'll want to know more and you can find it in this more measured account provided by Nicholas Booth in 'Zigzag.' I highly recommend both books. They are well worth reading, not to mention making into a movie! - Tom Hanks, if I remember correctly, has bought the movie rights, but a film has yet to be made. (I received no compensation whatsoever for the endorsement of these two books.)

The book is a great read and that's hard to find. The big thing about Eddie Chapman's story is it shows one of the millions or billions of instances in which a potentially solid fate sours when confronted with downturns, constrained opportunity, hormones, etc. Today, such a de-railed character ends up with our growing population behind walls and barbed wire at Marion, Sing-Sing, or Leavenworth. Chapman's cleverness and sheer luck of circumstance let him turn his lemon of a livelihood into lemonade (a kind of career-skill, eh?). The portrayal of his Nazi handlers and their treatment of him has a twinge of Hogan's Heroes. Pick up the book. I am anxious read further to get others' take on the Eddie Chapman story....

A fascinating read that had me turning pages deep into the night. And, the most amazing thing is that it's a true story! Good reading for anyone with a Walter Mitty complex or who just enjoys a good yarn.

Great book. Gripping. The reader gets a good understanding of war life for civilians, law enforcement, and spies in England, France, and Germany during World War II. I could not put this book down.

During World War II, Eddie Chapman bore the codename "Zigzag", given to him by his British masters at MI5. Such names were supposed to be close to meaningless; the point was to keep Chapman and his work secret. But some spymaster allowed a shade of meaning into Chapman's designator; he had zigged through the British criminal underworld, zagged through the ranks of German espionage, and MI5 had trouble understanding where he was coming from or where he would show up next. "Without a doubt he was the most remarkable spy of the Second World War," writes Nicholas Booth in _Zigzag: The Incredible Wartime Exploits of Double Agent Eddie Chapman_ (Arcade Publishing). Chapman has had his biographies before, and even a couple of autobiographies which are not really to be trusted because, well, he was Eddie Chapman, and also because of censorship restrictions, still in place when Chapman brought out his "real" story in 1966. Now the official secrecy is lifted and archives opened, and with the help of Chapman's longsuffering but devoted widow, Booth has researched Chapman's story as much as it probably will ever be. It's one of those stories that if it were brought out as a novel, it would be dismissed as lacking any grounds for credibility. Chapman was a clever, devious fellow, and MI5 harnessed the deviousness without ever rewarding him or acknowledging how much the nation was in Chapman's debt. Chapman was born in 1914 and drifted to London in the mid-1930s, where, in his own words, he "met and mixed with all types of tricky people, racecourse crooks, touts, thieves, prostitutes and the flotsam of the nightlife of a great city." He was a small-time crook and went on to a specialty of blowing up safes. He was languishing in prison on the island of Jersey when the Germans took it over in 1940. The Germans recruited him as an agent and he was sent to training in France courtesy of the Abwehr, the intelligence branch of the German armed forces. In December 1942, Chapman was parachuted to Britain with a radio set, and he contacted the British Secret Service, who helped him pretend to blow up an aircraft factory. It was enough to impress his German controllers when he radioed them of his results, and when he returned to Germany, they were overjoyed to have him back. They presented him with the Iron Cross medal (Booth says it may have been a less prestigious medal than the Iron Cross, but still, he was the only Briton to win one). In 1944 when the German V-weapons were being developed, Chapman was parachuted again into Britain (the only double agent to make the crossing twice), and was there for the rest of the war. He transmitted reports about the landing points of the V-1 buzzbombs, reports that falsely indicated the bombs were overreaching their targets. Thereafter, bombs sent to destroy London began falling short in the fields of Kent. The money and medal from Germany would be more recognition than Chapman would get from Britain. MI5 did a