Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a con man, and a philanderer. He was also one of the most remarkable double agents Britain has ever produced. Inside the traitor was a man of loyalty; inside the villain was a hero. The problem for Chapman, his spymasters, and his lovers was to know where one persona ended and the other began.

In 1941, after training as a German spy in occupied France, Chapman was orders orders from the Abwehr to blow up an airplane factory in Britain. Instead, he contacted MI5, the British Secret Service. For the next four years, Chapman worked as a double agent, a lone British spy at the heart of the German Secret Service.

Crisscrossing Europe under different names, all the while weaving plans, spreading disinformation, and, miraculously, keeping his stories straight under intense interrogation, he even managed to gain some profit and seduce beautiful women along the way.

The Nazis feted Chapman as a hero and awarded him the Iron Cross. In Britain, he was pardoned for his crimes, becoming the only wartime agent to be thus rewarded.

Sixty years after the end of the war, and 10 years after Chapman’s death, MI5 has now declassified all of Chapman’s files, releasing more than 1,800 pages of top secret material and allowing the full story of Agent Zigzag to be told for the first time.

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Product details

Listening Length	10 hours and 53 minutes
Author	Ben MacIntyre
Narrator	John Lee
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com Release Date	September 26, 2007
Publisher	Random House Audio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B000WM9UHU
Best Sellers Rank	#15,197 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #16 in Espionage True Crime #17 in World War II Biographies #59 in Espionage True Accounts

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A fantastic work of historical fiction, eminently readable, more history than fiction.

Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2018

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This is the second book I have read by Ben McIntyre (the first was “A Spy Among Friends”, about Kim Philby) and I continue to be impressed. There exists a genre called ‘historical fiction’ in which an author writes a story that takes place sometime in the past, maybe in the same time frame as an important event, or maybe about some important historical figure. There are various levels of accuracy – sometimes there is nothing historical whatsoever other than the story takes place in the past. Or sometimes a story is a reenactment of actual events, grounded in reality and with evidence of significant research. Then there are the books written by masters of the genre who create highly readable, thoroughly engaging accounts of actual historical events that transport the reader into the era and read like the best modern day thriller (Steven Pressfield, Robert Harris, and David L. Robbins come to mind).

Ben McIntyre is one such author whose works are at the very top level of the genre. He has the rare ability to turn the results of his exhaustive, stunningly complete research into a book that reads like a top shelf novel but drips with authenticity at every turn. In “Agent Zigzag”, we learn of the exploits of Eddie Chapman, an Englishman with an extensive criminal record who becomes a spy for the Germans but ultimately becomes a double agent run by the British. Despite his past, he becomes quite successful, supplying information to the British, supplying disinformation to the Germans, and earning the respect of both sides while doing it. He is one of the few spies who actually provided information which helped turn the war in favor of the Allies. In fact, one of his British handlers stated that his exploits were so incredible that they were beyond conception for the writer of fiction.

The book starts with Eddie the criminal deserting his lunch date by jumping out of a window as the police close in on him, and ends with Eddie the spy encountering that same woman (whom he marries) in a different restaurant after the war is over. In between the lunch dates, he gets picked up by police, gets sentenced to jail, gets collected by the Germans, and learns tradecraft, bomb making, and wireless communications. He is parachuted into England, where he immediately goes to work for the Allies and commences to supply his German handlers with disinformation, perform various espionage tasks, and help in measurable ways to win the war. He even returns to the Germans, survives numerous interrogations, and proceeds to supply his English handlers with information straight from the heart of enemy territory.

The text is clear and readable, with proper grammar and structure. It is alive, however, and delivers the story at the pace of the best novel, but is peppered throughout with references to material obtained from MI5 archives, interviews, and other history sources. In fact, the last fifty plus pages are footnotes on the sources from which the material was obtained. If high school history texts were this well written, there would be a lot more historians around.

This book is quite entertaining and satisfying, and at the end you will have learned things about the covert side of WWII that you would never have known otherwise. And all along the way you will marvel at how one man can do so many things and live to tell about it. I recommend “Agent Zigzag”.

36 people found this helpful

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theresaoregonian

WW II double agent skulks his way through the war in style !

Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2016

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This is a fascinating spy story from WW II. It's not quite as good as Macintyre's Operation Mincemeat book. But it has some very clever deceptions, cover ups, sabotage and other exploits of Eddie Chapman (alias Fritz, alias Zigzag).

Eddie was a British citizen, rough Soho neighborhood criminal and safecracker. His capture and imprisonment on the British isle of Jersey coincided with the Nazi takeover of Jersey. Not wanting to spend his time time a Nazi jail he offered his explosives and criminal expertise to the Nazis. They took him up on it and after training, sent him to Britian to commit sabotage. He was promptly captured.

Not wanting to spend his time in a British jail, he offered his spy services to MI5. He had just been trained as a Nazi spy and had loads of information. The Brits took him up on the offer. He was then trained in British spy techniques (while regularly sending messages back to his German handlers).

The whole story is a romp through the double agent spy system during WW II. The fate of Eddie/Fritz/Zigzag is for the reader to discover. I highly recommend this book.

27 people found this helpful

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Page-turner

Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2015

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The hero of the book was well dubbed "Zigzag." A minor British crook, Eddie Chapman was being held in a local jail on the Isle of Jersey when the Nazis took over the place. He immediately volunteered his services as a spy against Britain. The Germans finally accepted him and trained him to destroy the De Haviland aircraft factory in England, dropping him by parachute onto British soil. Once he got there, he immediately turned himself in to the authorities and offered to become a double agent against Germany. How they "destroyed" the aircraft factory is a great story all by itself, and Chapman's adventures would make a very good movie. In fact, a rather bad movie was made of it -- Triple Cross, starring Christopher Plummer -- as the studio tried to add little Sean Connery/James Bond touches to a story that was far more interesting than the script. I chanced upon that movie on TV just after I read the book, so I speak from experience.

The book is a good example of a Boys' Own Paper adventure (with added sex). Macintyre tries his best to unravel the twists in Chapman's character, but the spy remains just too twisty. However, he does a good job with the supporting players -- Chapman's British and German spymasters, a collection of eccentrics, like the enthusiastic Nazi who was hipped on English folk dancing. Macintyre also has worked hard to separate Chapman's version of things from what actually happened -- Chapman, to put it kindly, liked to embroider. Amazon offers the Kindle edition at a very low price, and it gives good value for the money, since one can reread it as one rereads a spy thriller. This thriller just happens to be true.

15 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Matthew H

A must read!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 4, 2017

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Ben Macintyre, a quite superb writer, has a knack of unearthing gems of stories. A previous book, A Foreign Field, told the remarkable tale of four British soldiers given sanctuary in a French village during the First World War after being marooned behind enemy lines. Now he has told the equally remarkable story of Second World War double agent Eddie Chapman.

Chapman, a criminal, sybarite and serial philanderer, found himself on Jersey when the Germans invaded and was transferred to a hellhole of a prison in Paris. The only way out of this benighted existence was to volunteer his services to the Abwehr as a secret agent. Eventually accepted, he was then parachuted into England, where he promptly landed flat on his face and then swiftly handed himself over to the police and volunteered to become a secret agent.

Get the picture? This was a man who first and foremost was driven by self-interest. Yet, as Macintyre makes clear, Chapman was not that simple a character. He developed a genuine affection for his Abwehr controllers. As for his many female conquests, he always professed undying affection, an emotion that was uniformly reciprocated.

Even his British secret service superiors, who, correctly, treated him initially with hostility and suspicion, succumbed to his undoubted charm and ability. Only when he volunteered to assassinate Hitler and go out in a blaze of glory did they curb his patent enthusiasm for espionage. That he was eventually sacked as an agent owed far more to another man's jealousy than to Chapman's failings.

Ben Macintyre tells Chapman's story with panache, affection and tremendous wit. In the course of Agent Zigzag, there are many charming and touching vignettes, none more so than the case of Praetorius, one of Chapman's Abwehr minders. A fan of all things English, but especially folk dancing, Praetorius eventually left the secret service and was appointed dance instructor to the Wehrmacht in the middle of the war. It makes you wonder why it took so long for the Germans to lose.

27 people found this helpful

E Griffith

Interesting.....but....

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 31, 2021

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I’ve read several books by this author and they’ve always been fascinating reads. This starts off well too. Chapman was a pretty unpleasant criminal, but obviously a clever and charming one by the way he plays both the German and British secret services against each other and also his many lady friends. There’s no doubt he was an outlandish adventurer, brave even, but there was only one side he was interested in. His own. So in this way he’s not actually a very nice person and despite his derring do it’s difficult to warm to him. Despite a good start the book seems to run out of steam about two thirds through with little left to talk about. This was disappointing as previous books have continued to grip until the end. Nevertheless an interesting read about a character I knew nothing about during the dark days of the war.

One person found this helpful

Corby

The real 007...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 24, 2021

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A story based on real life,hard to belive watched the movie Triple cross starring Christopher Plummer and was so amazed that I got this book it was based on the real life of Eddie Chapman and was fact based, a story of a man who broke into houses and safes and ended up in prison,who then became a double agent working for Germany and Britain during the second world war.You start to realise where the idea for James Bond concept came from and was based on. Like Bond Chapman had nerves of steel and a eye for beautiful ladies as well as almost being found out a few times he still returned to carry out his missions,his final mission to help divert rockets aimed at London, amazing read.

One person found this helpful

Vicuña

Reads like a thriller. Fast paced and filled with compelling characters

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 5, 2017

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Ben Macintyre's real life account of spy, Eddie Chapman, reads like a thriller. Although packed with fact, the text is gripping and I was keen to know what happened next.

Source material is annotated and accessible and there's a veracity to the content which makes the story an exciting and relevant read. This book links well with others by the author, who writes with authority about espionage and duplicity in WWII. Chapman was a no mark crook who d beloved a taste for the high life. There's a strange naivety about the way in which disaffected individuals were 'turned'. Macintyre explores the way in which Chapman reached a position where he was content to maybe betray his country. But he also explores other possibility and the reader is left to judge the truth. Informed, intelligent, compelling and written with verve and a real sense of adventure.

6 people found this helpful

GeordieReader

Fascinating account of espionage in World War 2

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2016

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By the time war broke out, Eddie Chapman was a seasoned criminal. He was a member of one of the first gelignite gangs, and by a series of coincidences, he was in prison on Jersey when the Germans occupied the island. This was the start of a series of almost unbelievable events that took Eddie all over Europe.

I loved 'A Spy among Friends' and although I didn't enjoy this quite so much, it is still pretty good. Kim Philby was an enigmatic character, whose motives were often unclear, but Eddie Chapman always looked out for himself. This, and his experiences in the criminal underworld, actually made him an effective spy. What makes this a gripping read is the quality of the writing. It is meticulously researched, but the author doesn't let this weigh down the story, which moves along at a cracking pace. He's also very good at drawing out people's motives, and although he doesn't quite succeed in making Eddie Chapman likeable, he definitely helps us to understand him and feel some sympathy for him.

2 people found this helpful

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