Product Description

Eddie Chapman was a womaniser, blackmailer and safecracker. He was also a great hero - the most remarkable double agent of the Second World War. Chapman became the only British national ever to be awarded an Iron Cross for his work for the Reich. He was also the only German spy ever to be parachuted into Britain twice. But it was all an illusion: Eddie fooled the Germans in the same way he conned his victims in civilian life. He was working for the British all along. Until now, the full story of Eddie Chapman's extraordinary exploits has never been told, thwarted by the Official Secrets Act. Now at last all the evidence has been released, including Eddie's M15 files, and a complete account of what he achieved is told in this enthralling book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75520 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Review
"* 'A splendidly vivid portrait of the man' Max Hastings, The Sunday Times * 'A compelling and well-researched biography' Evening Standard * 'A gripping page turner... provides an excellent portrait of this slippery real-life agent and conman. It's skilfully written and fast paced.' David Stafford, author of Churchill and Secret Service * 'Booth explodes many of the myths surrounding Chapman' Scotsman"

Nigel West
Zigzag is a remarkable account of an extraordinary double agent.
Eddie Chapman was an authentic war hero and the author's meticulous
research does justice to his astomishing exploits.

About the Author
Nicholas Booth is a writer and broadcaster. For ten years, he worked as a journalist, starting his career with the Observer, and ending up as technology editor on The Times. He lives in Cheshire.

Customer Reviews

A true spy story that reads like a thriller
I'd never heard of Eddie Chapman before, so the story of this Second World War double agent astounded me - if it was fiction, you'd think it absurdly far-fetched! Eddie seems to have been a right villain (though his widow Betty rather sweetly denies he was an ace safecracker). But like Oscar Schindler, he proved that sometimes war can bring out the best in even out and out rogues - not many supposedly moral citizens would have had Eddie's ice-cool courage in fooling the Germans he was spying for them for so long. One slip and he was a dead man. In this thrilling book, Nick Booth has made good use of the recently-released M15 interrogation files; and the redoubtable Betty Chapman - who stoically endured Eddie's numerous infidelties- has made a touching contiribution to the memory of a great British hero.

An incredible story, an extraordinary guy
Zig-Zag is hugely enjoyable. If this was fiction you would dismiss it as too far fetched, but Eddie Chapman was one of those larger than life characters who crossed into the realm of the truly extraordinary when he was freed from a Jersey prison to work as a German spy. But the would-be collaborator turned double agent, sparking a chain of events that catapulted him into a real-life deadly game of cat and mouse deception.

This book chronicles, in entertaining fashion, the extraordinary exploits of this most unlikely of war heroes. And it does this in a totally non-judgemental way. It is one of those rare finds: a real page turner that is both well written and easy to read, and obviously well researched. Clearly, the author had privileged access to Eddie's widow and recently de-classified material, unearthing vivid new material. If you like dusty old biographies, this isn't the book for you.

What I particularly liked was the pace of the narrative and its no-nonsense depiction of the seemingly irreconcilable contradictions in Eddie's life. He was a womaniser but obviously respected and loved his wife, and as a criminal he fought the establishment but gambled with his life to protect it - the consummate double agent. Perhaps the greatest irony was that the Germans, not the British, awarded him a medal. Like all good conundrums, the book keeps us guessing by letting the reader decide what made this extraordinary man tick. That's a good thing, for I'd like to believe there is an Eddie Chapman somewhere in us all.

Only in time of war
Eddie Chapman, the subject of Nicholas Booth's engrossing biography, was essentially a man of his time and generation. From a modest background in Sunderland, his craving for excitement led him to London where he mixed with criminals as a safe-cracker, to Jersey where he landed in prison, and to occupied France where he threw himself into the arms of German Intelligence. The Germans trained him as a spy and saboteur and parachuted him into England where he threw himself into the arms of British Intelligence. For the rest of the war he served as a double agent, returning to Germany and being parachuted back into England a second time.

These exploits, even in the highly-charged atmosphere of a major war, would simply be unbelievable were it not for the access the author has had to declassified Intelligence files and to the memories and papers of Chapman's widow. They make for a fast-moving, gripping narrative which benefits from Booth's placing of Chapman's escapades within the wider context of the war.

There are moments where the reader may feel the story doesn't quite hang together. On one page Eddie is said to have passed idle days in Paris on the tourist boats; the following page portrays a Paris of food shortages, disrupted rail services and the impossibility of tourism. There are references to "field security policemen,' but in my personal experience of field security towards the end of the forties neither I, nor any of my colleagues, would have seen ourselves as policemen. The mention of an army "captain" with "two pips" on his shoulder is a lapse in accuracy that could easily have been avoided.

But these are minor niggles which cannot ultimately detract from a detailed account of the life of an extraordinary man. Nicholas Booth's success is that he manages to stay neutral about his subject: alive to the man's charm and bravery but never blind to his unpredictable fecklessness. At the end, one is left with an ambivalent view of where Chapman's deepest loyalty lay. Probably it was to himself.