Agent Zigzag [Kindle Edition]

This is tremendous book; well-researched and well written. The author, Ben Macintyre deals with Eddie Chapman as though he was one of Chapman's Security Service handlers; questioning everything, giving praise where appropriate but never quite trusting him. He describes Chapman as `a shameless liar', sentiments with which I fully agree. There is no doubt that Chapman did a good service for his country since he convincingly bluffed the Germans but he `tried it on' with everybody he encountered and I wonder which way he would have jumped if the allies had lost the war?

A gripping account of England's most famous double agent.

This highly entertaining and utterly gripping audio CD is the true story of Eddie Chapman, a British petty criminal who ended up serving as an spy for both England and Germany during World War 2, and who was hailed as a hero by both sides. "Agent Zigzag" is the name that he was given by the British authorities who were aware of his status as a double agent and used him to feed misinformation to the Germans.

Chapman's story is so full of adventure and ripe with coincidence that would be unbelievable if it were a novel. The story of how he comes to be an agent for the Germans is in itself worthy of a movie, taking us from a bank robbery in Scotland to prison - and eventual freedom - on the island of Jersey and then incarceration in the worst of Parisian prisons.

Chapman emerges as a kind of James Bond character: a handsome and charming rogue with a penchant for adventure, for gambling, fine food and fast women. He is a fascinating mass of contradictions: utterly loyal to his friends even as he betrays them, a hopeless criminal who develops into a resourceful spy.

Ben MacIntyre has amassed a vast amount of detail about not only Chapman, but his associates in both the German and English secret services. There is lots of interesting information about how those secret services functioned and what they achieved during the war. I was particularly riveted by the details about his training in spy techniques by the Nazis.

The audio book is made up of 5 CDs and plays for about 6 hours. It is beautifully read and very clearly enunciated. While it is an abridged version of the book, it has been very skillfully adapted and (having also read the book) I can tell you that they've done an excellent job of maintaining all the key points. My one criticism is that they should have incorporated more photographs into the accompanying booklet, which could easily have been done. They don't even tell you who the photos on the cover are, so for your reference the large image is Chapman after the war, the woman is Dagmar Lahlum (his Norwegian girlfriend), the man with the eyeglass is Colonel Robin Stephens (the commander of Camp 020) and the figure with the hat is Chapman again, later in life, posing in as SS uniform.

There are times when reading this book, when one would be forgiven for thinking that this is a work of fiction. The stories come thick and fast and for this reason alone it is well worth a read. The really interesting piece, I found, was the description of the relationship that developed between the spy and his handlers. Complex, confused, ever changing and fascinating as each fought to keep the upper hand in an dynamic and unpredictable environment. Well worth the read.